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AUTHOR: 


FRANK,  TENNEY 


TITLE: 


VERGIL  A  BIOGRAPHY 


PLACE: 


NEW  YORK 


DA  TE : 


1922 


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Frank,  Tenney,  1876-  1939. 

Vergil,  a  biography,  by  Tenney  Frank  .. 
York,  Holt,  1922 • 

▼ii#  200  p.   23  cm. 

Copy  in  College  Library.  1922. 
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VERGIL 


zA  biography 


By 

Tenney  Frank 

Professor  of  Latin 

in  the 

Johns  Hopkins  Uni*versity 


New  York 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1922 


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COPYRIGHT,    1922, 
BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


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THE  MEMORY  OF 

W.  WARDE  FOWLER 


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PREFACE 

Modern  literary  criticism  has  accustomed  us  to 
interpret  our  masterpieces  in  the  light  of  the  au- 
thor's daily  experiences  and  the  conditions  of  the 
society  in  which  he  lived.  The  personalities  of  very 
few  ancient  poets,  however^  can  be  realized,  and  this 
is  perhaps  the  chief  reason  why  their  works  seem 
to  the  average  man  so  cold  and  remote.  VergiPs 
age,  with  its  terribly  intense  struggles,  lies  hidden 
behind  the  opaque  mists  of  twenty  centuries:  by 
his  very  theory  of  art  the  poet  has  conscientiously 
drawn  a  veil  between  himself  and  his  reader,  and 
the  scraps  of  information  about  him  given  us  by  the 
fourth  century  grammarian,  Donatus,  are  inconsis- 
tent, at  best  unauthenticated,  and  generally  irrele- 
vant. 

Indeed  criticism  has  dealt  hard  with  Donatus'  life 
of  Vergil.  It  has  shown  that  the  meager  Vka  is  a 
conglomeration  of  a  few  chance  facts  set  into  a  mass 
of  later  conjecture  derived  from  a  literal-minded 
interpretation  of  the  Eclogues,  to  which  there  gath- 
ered during  the  credulous  and  neurcclc  decades  of 
the  second  and  third  centuries  an  accretion  of  irre- 
sponsible gossip. 

However,  though  we  have  had  to  reject  many  o£ 
the  statements  of  Donatus,  criticism  has  procured  for 
us  more  than  a  fair  compensation  from  another 


1 


■itiiiinin 


III 

i 


«i  PREFACE 

source.  A  series  of  detailed  studies  of  the  numerous 
minor  poems  attributed  to  Vergil  by  ancient  authors 
and  mediaeval  manuscripts  —  till  recently  pro- 
nounced unauthentic  by  modern  scholars  —  has  com- 
pelled most  of  us  to  accept  the  Appendix  Vergiliana 
at  face  value.  These  poems,  written  in  VergiPs 
formative  years  before  he  had  adopted  the  reserved 
manner  of  the  classical  style,  are  full  of  personal 
reminiscences.  They  reveal  many  important  facts 
about  his  daily  life,  his  occupations,  his  ambitions 
and  his  ideals,  and  best  of  all  they  disclose  the  pro- 
cesses by  which  the  poet  during  an  apprenticeship  of 
ten  years  developed  the  mature  art  of  the  Georgics 
and  the  Aeneid.  They  have  made  it  possible  for  us 
to  visualize  him  with  a  vividness  that  is  granted  us 
in  the  case  of  no  other  Latin  poet. 

The  reason  for  attempting  a  new  biography  of 
Vergil  at  the  present  time  is  therefore  obvious.  This 
essay,  conceived  with  the  purpose  of  centering  atten- 
tion upon  the  poet's  actual  life,  has  eschewed  the 
larger  task  of  literary  criticism  and  has  also  avoided 
the  subject  of  VergiPs  literary  sources  —  a  theme  to 
which  scholars  have  generally  devoted  too  much  acu- 
men. The  book  is  therefore  of  brief  compass,  but 
it  has  been  kept  to  its  single  theme  in  the  conviction 
that  the  reader  who  will  study  VergiPs  works  as  in 
some  measure  an  outgrowth  of  the  poet's  own  ex- 
periences will  find  a  new  meaning  in  not  a  few  of 
their  lines. 

T.  F. 


^ 


i 


%.\ 


I  i 


CONTENTS 

t 

CHAPTER  ^^^^ 

I     Mantua  dives  avis 3 

II     School  and  War *    .    .   .   .  IS 

III  The  Culex 28 

IV  The  Ciris 3S 

V     A  Student  of  Philosophy 47 

VI     Epigram  and  Epic 64 

VII     Epicurean  PoUtics 77 

VIII     Last  Days  at  the  Garden 87 

IX     Materialism  in  the  Service  of  Poetry loi 

X     Recubans  sub  tegmine  fagi "O 

XI     The  Evictions ^22 

XII     Pollio 13* 

XIII  The  Circle  of  Maecenas ^ i39 

XIV  The  Georgics ^S^ 

XV     The  Aeneid 167 


Vll 


\\ 


VERGIL 


«» 


,,  ^ 


ill 


*/ 


il 

I    ( 


IH 


MANTUA  DIVES  AVIS 

Among  biographical  commonplaces  one  fre- 
quently finds  the  generalization  that  it  is  the  provin- 
cial who  acquires  the  perspective  requisite  for  a  true 
estimate  of  a  nation,  and  that  it  is  the  country-boy 
reared  in  lonely  communion  with  himself  who  attains 
the  deepest  knowledge  of  human  nature.  If  there 
be  some  degree  of  truth  in  this  reflection,  Publius 
Vergilius  Maro,  the  farmer's  boy  from  the  Mantuan 
plain,  was  in  so  far  favored  at  birth.  It  is  the 
fifteenth  of  October,  70  b.  c,  that  the  Mantuans  still 
hold  in  pious  memory:  in  1930  they  will  doubtless 
invite  Italy  and  the  devout  of  all  nations  to  celebrate 
the  twentieth  centenary  of  the  poet's  birth. 

Ancient  biographers,  little  concerned  with  Men- 
delian  speculation,  have  not  reported  from  what 
stock  his  family  sprang.  Scientific  curiosity  and  na- 
tionalistic egotism  have  compelled  modem  bio- 
graphers to  become  anthropologists.  Vergil  has  ac- 
cordingly been  referred,  by  some  critic  or  other,  to 
each  of  the  several  peoples  that  settled  the  Po  Valley 


I 


'.I 


.  VERGIL 

in  ancient  times:  the  Umbrians,  the  Etruscans,  the 
Celts,  the  Latins.  The  evidence  cannot  be  mustered 
into  a  compelling  conclusion,  but  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  reject  the  improbable  suppositions. 

The  name  tells  little.    Vergilius  is  a  good  Italic 
nomen  found  in  all  parts  of  the  peninsula,^  but 
Latin  names  came  as  a  matter  of  course  with  the  gift 
of  citizenship  or  of  the  Latin  status,  and  Mantua 
with  the  rest  of  Cisalpine  Gaul  had  received  the 
Latin  status  nineteen  years  before  Vergil's  birth.  - 
The  cognomen  Maro  is  in  origin  a  magistrate's  title 
used  by  Etruscans  and  Umbrians,  but  cognomina 
were  a  recent  fashion  in  the  first  century  b.c.  and 
were  selected  by  parents  of  the  middle  classes  largely 

by  accident. 

Vergil  himself,  a  good  antiquarian,  assures  us  that 
in  the  heroic  age  Mantua  was  chiefly  Etruscan  with 
enclaves  of  two  other  peoples  (presumably  Um- 
brians and  Venetians).  In  this  he  is  doubtless  fol- 
lowing a  fairly  reliable  tradition,  accepted  all  the 
more  willingly  because  of  his  intimacy  with  Mae- 
cenas, who  was  of  course  Etruscan :  ^ 

Mantua  dives  avis,  sed  non  genus  omnibus  unum, 
Gens  illis  triplex,  populi  sub  gente  quaterni, 
Ipsa  caput  populis;  Tusco  de  sanguine  vires. 
1  Braunholz,  TAe  Nationality  of  Vergil,  Classical  Revie-J,, 

1915,  104.  ff. 

*  Aeneid,  X,  201-3. 


>  I 


I 


MANTUA   DIVES   AVIS  5 

Pliny  seems  to  have  supposed  this  passage  a  descrip- 
tion of  Mantua  in  VergiPs  own  day:  Mantua  Tus- 
corum  trans  Padum  sola  reliqua  (III.  130).  That 
could  hardly  have  been  Vergil's  meaning,  howeverj 
for  the  Celts  who  flooded  the  Po  Valley  four  cen- 
turies before  drove  all  before  them  except  in  the 
Venetian  marshes  and  the  Ligurian  hills.  They 
could  not  have  left  an  Etruscan  stronghold  in  the 
center  of  their  path.  Vergil  was  probably  not 
Etruscan. 

The  case  for  a  Celtic  origin  is  equally  improbable. 
From  the  time  when  the  Senones  burned  Rome  in 
390  B,  c.  till  Caesar  conquered  Gaul,  the  fear  of  in- 
vasions from  this  dread  race  never  slumbered.  Dur- 
ing the  weary  years  of  the  Punic  war  when  Hanni- 
bal drew  his  fresh  recruits  from  the  Po  Valley,  the 
determination  grew  ever  stronger  that  the  Alps 
should  become  Rome's  barrier  line  on  the  North. 
Accordingly  the  pacification  of  the  Transpadane  re- 
gion continued  with  little  intermission  until  Polyb- 
m  ^  could  say  two  generations  before  VergiPs  birth 
that  the  Gauls  had  practically  been  driven  out  of 
the  Po  Valley,  and  that  they  then  held  but  a 
few  villages  in  the  foothills  of  the  Alps.  If 
this  be  true,  the  open  country  of  Mantua  must 
have  had  but  few  survivors.     And  the  few  that 

•  Polybius,  11.  35,  4  (written  about  140  b.  c). 


I 


Il 


I) 


£  VERGIL 

remained  were  not  often  likely  to  have  the  privi- 
lege of  intermarrying  with  the  Roman  settlers 
who  filled  the  vacuum.  Romans  were  too  proud  of 
their  citizenship  to  intermarry  with  feregrini  and 
raise  children  who  must  by  Roman  laws  forego  the 
dignities  of  citizenship.* 

A  Celtic  strain  of  romance  has  been  from  time  to 
time  claimed  for  VergiPs  poetry,  though  those  who 
employ  such  terms  seldom  agree  in  their  definition 
of  them.  His  romanticism  may  be  more  easily  ex- 
plained by  his  early  devotion  to  the  CatuUan  group 
of  poets,  and  the  Celtic  traits  —  whatever  they  may 
be  —  by  the  close  racial  affiliations  between  Celts 
and  Italians,  vouched  for  by  anthropologists.  But 
the  difficulty  of  applying  the  test  of  the  "  Celtic 
temperament ''  lies  in  the  fact  that  there  are  appar- 
ently now  no  true  representatives  of  the  Celtic  race 
from  whom  to  establish  a  criterion.  The  peoples 
that  have  longest  preserved  dialects  of  the  Celtic 
languages  appear  from  anthropometric  researches  to 
contain  a  dominant  strain  of  a  diflFerent  race,  perhaps 
that  of  the  pre-Indo-European  inhabitants  of  West- 
em  Europe.  It  may  be,  therefore,  that  what 
Amoldians  now  refer  to  the  "  Celts  "  is  after  all 
not  Celtic.    At  best  it  is  unsafe  to  search  for  racial 

*  Ulpian,  Dig,  V.  8,  ex  pcregrino  et  cive  Romano,  peregrinus 
nascitur. 


I;    4 


I   I 


'  t 


MANTUA   DIVES   AVIS  7 

traits  in  the  work  of  genius  j  in  this  instance  it  would 
but  betray  loose  thinking. 

The  assumption  of  Celtic  origin  is,  there- 
fore, hazardous.^  There  is,  however,  a  strong  like- 
lihood that  VergiPs  forbears  were  among  the 
Roman  and  Latin  colonists  who  went  north  in  search 
of  new  homes  during  the  second  century  b.  c.  Ver- 
giPs father  was  certainly  a  Roman  citizen,  for  none 
'but  a  citizen  could  have  sent  his  son  to  Rome  to 
prepare  for  a  political  career.  Mantua  indeed,  a 
"  Latin  "  town  after  89  b.  c,  did  not  become  a  Ro- 
man municipality  until  after  Vergil  had  left  it,  but 
VergiPs  father,  according  to  the  eighth  Catalepotty 
had  earlier  in  his  life  lived  in  Cremona.  That  city 
was  colonized  by  Roman  citizens  in  218  b.  c.  and 
recolonized  in  190,  and  though  the  colonists  were 
reduced  to  the  "  Latin  status,"  the  magistrates  of  the 
town  and  their  descendants  secured  citizenship  from 
the  beginning,  and  finally  in  89  b.  c.  the  whole 
colony  received  full  citizenship.  But  quite  apart 
from  this,  all  of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  as  the  region  was 
called,  was  receiving  immigrants  from  all  parts  of 
Italy  throughout  the  second  century,  when  the  fields 
farther  south  were  being  exhausted  by  long  tilling, 

*  Vergil  we  know  was  tall  and  dark.  The  Gauls  were  as  a 
rule  fair  with  light  hair.  The  Etruscans  on  the  other  hand,  while 
dark,  were  generally  short  of  stature.  Such  data  are  however 
not  of  great  importance. 


J  ipH |Jii|i| 


•9im^Trs3PSSS: 


8  VERGIL 

and  were  falling  into  the  hands  of  capitalistic  land- 
lords and  grazers.  Since  Roman  citizenship  was  a 
personal  rather  than  a  territorial  right,  such  immi- 
grants could  preserve  their  political  status  despite 
their  change  of  habitation.  The  probabilities  are,  f 
therefore,  that  in  any  case  Vergil,  though  born  in  {^ 
the  province,  was  of  the  old  Latin  stock.  ^ 

About  the  child  appropriate  stories  gathered  in 
time,  but  what  the  biographers  chose  to  repeat  in 
the  credulous  days  of  Donatus,  when  Rome  was  al- 
most an  Oriental  city,  need  not  detain  us  long.    To 
Donatus,  no  doubt,  Magia  seemed  a  suitable  name 
for  the  mother  of  a  poet  who  knew  the  mysteries  of 
the  lower  worlds  that  she  dreamed  prophetically  of 
the  coming  greatness  of  her  son,  we  may  grant  as 
a  matter  of  course.    Sober  judgment,  however,  can 
hardly  accept  the  miraculous  poplar  tree  which  shot 
up  at  the  place  of  nativity,  or  the  birth-stories  de- 
riving "Vergjlus"  from  virga,  contrary  to  early  Latin 
nomenclature  and  phonology.    It  is  well  to  mention 
these  things  merely  so  that  we  may  keep  in  mind 
how  little  faith  the  late  biographers  really  deserve. 
Donatus  is  also  inclined  to  accept  the  tradition  that 
VergiPs  father  was  a  potter  and  a  man  of  very  hum- 
ble circumstances.    That  VergiPs  father  made  pot- 
tery may  be  truej  a  father's  occupation  was  apt  to 
be  recorded  in  Augustan  biography  —  but  it  requires 


i 


MANTUA    DIVES   AVIS  9 

some  knowledge  of  Roman  society  to  comprehend 
what  these  words  meant  at  the  end  of  the  Republic. 
In  Donatus'  day  a  "  potter  "  was  a  day-laborer  in 
loin-cloth  and  leather  apron,  earning  about  twenty 
cents  for  a  long  day  of  fourteen  hours.  NegdksSJta. 
sayi^VeigiPsJeisurcd^ 

did  not  draw  from  such  a  trickling  source.    Donatus 
had  forgotten  that  in  Ver^iPs  day  the  economic  sys- 
tem of  Rome  was  entirely  different.    At  the  end  of 
the  Republic,  the  potters  of  Northern  Italy  con- 
ducted factories  oTenorm^output,  "f^r^thTy  had 
with  their  artistic  red-figured  ware  captured  the 
markets  of  the  whole  Mediterranean  basin.    The 
actual  workmen  were  not  Roman  citizens  by  any 
means,  but  slaves.    And  we  should  add  that  while 
industrial  producers,  like  traders,  were  in  general 
held  in  low  esteem,  because  most  of  them  were 
foreigners  and  freedmen,  the  producers  of  earthen- 
ware had^accident  escaped  from   the   general 
odium.   Ahe    reason    was    simply    that    earthen- 
ware pro^Kction   began   as   a  legitimate   extension 
of    agriculture  —  it    was    one    form    of    turning 
the  products  of  the  villa-soil  to  the  best  use  — 
and  agriculture  as  we  remember  (including  hor- 
ticulture and  stock-raising)  continued  into  Cicero's 
day  the  only  respectable  income-bringing  occupation 
m  which  a  Roman  senator  could  engage  without  apol- 


/ 


lo  VERGIL" 

ogy.  That  is  the  reason  why  even  the  names  of 
Cicero,  Asinius  Pollio,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  are  to  be 
found  on  brick  stamps  when  it  would  have  been  so- 
cially impossible  for  such  men  to  own,  shall  we  say^ 
hardware  or  clothing  factories.  Donatus  was  already 
so  far  away  from  that  day  that  he  had  no  feeling  for 
its  social  tabus.  The  property  of  Vergil's  father  — 
possibly  a  farm  with  a  pottery  on  some  part  of  it  — 
could  hardly  have  been  small  when  it  supported  the 
young  student  for  many  years  in  his  leisured  exist- 
ence at  Rome  and  Naples  imder  the  masters  that 
attracted  the  aristocracy  of  the  capital.  The  story  of 
Probus,  otherwise  not  very  reliable,  may,  therefore, 
be  true  —  that  sixty  soldiers  received  their  allot- 
ments from  the  estates  taken  from  Vergil's  father. 
|T^no  little  significance  is  the  fact  that  Vergil  first 
prepared  himself  for  public  life,'  and  progressed  so 
far  as  to  accept  one  case  in  court.  In  order  to  enter 
public  life  in  those  days  it  was  customary  to  trdn 
one's  self  as  widely  as  possible  in  literature,  history, 
rhetoric,  dialectic,  and  court  procedure,  and  to  attract 
public  notice  for  election  purposes  by  taking  a  few 
cases.  It  was  not  every  dtizen  who  dared  enter  such 
a  career.  This  was  the  one  occupation  that  the  no- 
bility guarded  most  jealously.    While  any  foreigner 

•  Donatus,  15;  Cirit,  I.2;  Catal.  V.;  Seneca,  Controtr.  III. 
praef.  8, 


ii 


MANTUA   DIVES   AVIS 
or  freedman  might  become  a  doctor,  banker,  archi- 
tect or  merchant  prince,  he  could  not  presume  to 
stand  up  before  a  praetor  to  discuss  the  rights  and 
wrongs  of  Roman  citizensj  and  since  the  advocate's 
work  was  furthermore  considered  the  legitimate 
prehmmary  to  magisterial  offices  it  must  the  more 
carefully  be  protected.     It  would  have  been  quite 
useless  for  Vergil  to  prepare  for  this  career  had  it 
been  obvious^  closed.    We  have  no  sure  record  in 

from    he  busmess  or  industrial  classes  to  a  career 
m  pubhc  Lfe  except  through  the  abnormal  accidents 

Vergil  s  father  belonged  to  a  landholding  family  I 
w.th  some  honors  of  municipal  service  to  L  ^  / 
Of  the  poet's  physical  tiaits  we  have  no  very      - 
satisfactory  description  or  likeness.     He  was  talT 
dark  and  rawboned,  retaining  through  life  the  ap- 

Sr  i  \"""^'^'"^"'  --^-ding  to  Donatus. 
He  also  suflFered,  says  the  same  writer,  the  symptoms 
that  accompany  tuberculosis.  The  reliability  of  this 
« her  inadequate  description  is  supported  by  a 
^ond-century  portrait  of  the  poet  done  in  a  crude 
payment  mosaic  which  has  been  found  in  northern 
Atnca.     To  be  sure  the  technique  is  so  faulty  that 

OPP.  'p",j;:'«'-''"'  ^-'-  '897,  Pl.  «;  Aune  e  Ronu.,  ,9,3. 


It  VERGIL 

we  cannot  possibly  consider  this  a  faithful  likeness. 
But  we  may  at  least  say  that  the  person  represented 
—  a  man  of  perhaps  forty-five  —  was  tall  and  loose- 
jointed,  and  that  his  countenance,  with  its  broad 
brow,  penetrating  eye,  firm  nose  and  generous  mouth 
and  chin,  is  distinctly  represented  as  drawn  and  ema- 
ciated. 

There  is  also  an  unidentified  portrait  in  a  half 
dozen  mediocre  replicas  representing  a  man  of 
twenty-five  or  thirty  years  which  some  archaeolo- 
gists are  inclined  to  consider  a  possible  representa- 
tion of  Vergil.®  It  is  the  so-called  "  Brutus."  The 
argument  for  its  attribution  deserves  serious  con- 
sideration. The  bust,  while  it  shows  a  far  younger 
man  than  the  African  mosaic,  reveals  the  same  con- 
tour of  countenance,  of  brow,  nose,  cheeks  and  chin. 
Furthermore  it  is  difficult  to  think  of  any  other  Ro- 
man in  private  life  who  attained  to  such  fame  that 
six  marble  replicas  of  his  portrait  should  have  sur- 
vived the  omnivorous  lime-kilns  of  the  dark  ages. 
The  Barrocco  museum  of  Rome  has  a  very  lifelike 
replica^  of  this  type  in  half-relief i  Though  its 
firm,  dry  workmanship  seems  to  be  of  a  few  decades 

'  See  British  School  Cat.  of  the  Mus,  CafitolinOy  p.  355; 
Beraoulli,  Rom.  IkonografhiCy   I,    187,   Helbig,'   I,   no.    872. 

*  Mrs.  Strong,  Roman  Sculfture  plate,  CIX;  Hekler,  Greek 
and  Roman  Portraits^  188  a.  The  antiquity  of  this  marble  has 
been  questioned^ 


MANTUA   DIVES  AVIS  ,, 

later  than  Vergil's  youth  it  may  well  be  a  fairly 
faithful  copy  of  one  of  the  first  busts  of  Verril 
made  at  the  time  when  the  Eclogues  had  spread  his 
fame  through  Rome. 

A  land  of  sound  constitutions,  mentally  and  phys- 
;cally,  was  the  frontier  region  in  which  Vergil  grew 
to  manhood^  and  had  it  not  later  been  drained  of  its 
urdy  atizenry  by  the  civil  wai.  and  recolonized  by 
he  wreckage  of  those  wars  it  would  have  become 
Italy  s  mainstay  through  the  Empire.    The  earlier 
Romans  and  Latins  who  had  first  accepted  colonial 
allotments  or  had  migrated  severally  there  for  over 
a  century  were  of  sterner  stuflF  than  the  indolent 
-mnants  that  had  drifted  to  the  city's  com  cri^:! 
ihese  frontiersmen  had  come  while  the  Italic  stock 
2    ;  I"""''  "°*  ^''  contaminated  by  the  freed- 

Man  ua  were  truer  guardians  of  the  puritanic  ideals 
of  Cato^s  day  than  Rome  itself.    The  clear  expres- 
sive diction  of  Catullus'  lyrics,  full  of  old-fashioned 
.turns,  the  sound  social  ideals  of  Vergil's  Georgics, 
the  buoyant  Idealism  of  the  Aeneid  and  of  Livy's 
^annals  speak  the  true  language  of  these  people     It 
,^s  not  surprising  then  that  in  Vergil's  youth  it'is  a 
group   of   fellow-provincials -returning   sons   of 
I  Rome  s  former  emigrants  -  that  take  the  lead  in 
the  new  literary  movements.    They  are  vigorous, 


/ 


H 


VERGIL 
*^  r^.n   pycellently  educated,  free  from 

new  nch  country,    bucn  were  Alfpnus 

^f  Premona,  Caec  lius  of  Comum,  neivm^ 
ISnTof  Bresci.,  and  Valerius  Cato  who  some- 
^^X^  .0  inspi«  in  so  many  of  .hem  a  lo.e 

for  poetry. 


II 

SCHOOL  AND  WAR 

To  Cremona,  Vergil  was  sent  to  school.    Caesar, 
the  governor  of  the  province,  was  now  conquering 
Gaul,  and  as  Cremona  was  the  foremost  provincial 
colony  from  which  Caesar  could  recruit  legionaries, 
the  school  boys  must  have  seen  many  a  maniple 
march  off  to  the  battle-fields  of  Belgium.  Those  boys 
read  their  Bellum  Gdlicum  in  the  first  edition, 
serial  publication.    When  we  remember  the  devotion 
of  Caesar's  soldiers  to  their  leader,  we  can  hardly 
be  surprised  at  the  poet's  lasting  reverence  for  the 
great  imperator.    He  must  have  seen  the  man  him- 
self, also,  for  Cremona  was  the  principal  point  in 
the  court  circuit  that  Caesar  traveled  during  the 
winters    between    his    campaigns  —  whenever    the 
Gauls  gave  him  respite. 

The  toga  virilis  Vergil  assumed  at  fifteen,  the  year 
that  Pompey  and  Crassus  entered  upon  their  second 
consulship  —  a  notice  to  all  the  world  that  the  tri- 
umvirate had  been  continued  upon  terms  that  made 
Julius  the  arbiter  of  Rome's  destinies. 

That  same  year  the  boy  left  Cremona  to  finish' 
his  literary  studies  in  Milan,  a  city  which  was  now 

IS 


i 


\.. 


w 


f-1 


it; 


h 


fi 


,6  VERGIL 

threatening  to  outstrip  Cremona  in  importance  and 
size.    The  continuation  of  his  studies  in  the  provmce 
instead  of  at  Rome  seems  to  have  been  fortunate: 
the  spirit  of  the  schools  of  the  north  was  healthier. 
At  Rome  the  undue  insistence  upon  a  practical  edu- 
ction, despite  Cicero's  protests,  was  hurrying  boys 
mto  classrooms  of  rhetoricians  who  were  supposed 
iio  turn  them  into  finished  public  men  at  an  early 
ll^gej  it  was  assumed  that  a  political  career  was  every 
gentleman's  business  and  that  every  young  man  of 
any  pretensions  must  acquire  the  art  of  speaking 
effectively  and  of  "thinking  on  his  feet."     The 
daims  of  pure  literature,  of  philosophy,  and  of  his- 
tory were  accorded  too  little  attention,  and  the  chief 
drill  centered  about  the  technique  of  declamatory 
prose.    Not  that  the  rhetorical  study  was  itself  made 
absolutely  practical.     The  teachers    unfortunately 
would  spin  the  technical  details  thin  and  long  to 
hold  profitable  students  over  several  years.     But 
their  claims  that  they  attained  practical  ends  imposed 
on  the  parents,  and  the  system  of  education  suffered. 
In  the  aorihem  province,  on  the  other  hand,  there 

(was  less  demand  for  studies  leading  directly  to  the 
forum.  Moreover,  some  of  the  best  teachers  were 
active  there.^  They  were  men  of  catholic  tastes,  who 
in  their  lectures  on  literature  ranged  widely  over  the 

^  Suetonius,  De  Gram.  3. 


SCHOOL   AND    WAR  ij 

centuries  of  Greek  masters  from  Homer  to  the  latest 
popular  poets  of  the  Hellenistic  period  and  over  the 
Latin  poets  from  Livius  to  Lucilius.     Indeed,  the 
young  men  trained  at  Cremona  and  Milan  between 
the  days  of  Sulla  and  Caesar  were  those  who  in  due 
time  passed  on  the  torch  of  literary  art  at  Rome, 
while  the  Roman  youths  were  being  enticed  away 
into  rhetoric.  VergiPs  remarkable  catholicity  of  taste  j 
and  his  aversion  to  the  cramping  technique  of  the  j 
rhetorical  course  are  probably  to  be  explained  in/ 
large  measure,  therefore,  by  his  contact  with  the\ 
teachers  of  the  provinces.     Vergil  did  not  scorn) 
ApoUonius   because   Homer   was   revered   as   the^ 
supreme  master,  and  though  the  easy  charm  of 
Catullus  taught  him  early  to  love  the  "new  poetry,"  ^ 
he  appreciated  none  the  less  the  rugged  force  of    ) 
Ennms.     Had  his  early  training  been  received  at 
Rome,   where  pedant  was  pitted  against  pedant, 
where  every  teacher  was  forced  by  rivalry  into  a 
partizan  attitude,  and  all  were  compelled  by  material 
demands  to  provide  a  "practical  education,"  even 
Vei^giPs  poetic  sgijqitr 

How  longVergil  remaine3^''Miia^  we  are  not 
told;  Donatus'  faulo  post  is  a  relative  term  that 
might  mean  a  few  months  or  a  few  years.    However 
^^^he  ^ge  of  sixteen  Vergil  was  dgubtless-ready  for 
the  metorical  course,  and  if  i«  nnQQi'Kl^  f^of  k^  « — ^ 


f  ■ 


t 


i! 


1 8  VERGIL' 

to  the  great  city  as  early  as  54  b.  c,  the  very  year  of 
Catullus'  death  and  of  the  publication  of  Lucretius^ 
f  De  Rerum  Natura.  The  brief  biography  of  Vergil 
contained  in  the  Berne  MS.  —  a  document  of  doubt- 
ful value  —  mentions  Epidius  as  VergiPs  teacher  in 
rhetoric,  and  adds  that  Octavius,  the  future  emperor, 
was  a  fellow  pupil.  This  is  by  no  means  unreason- 
able despite  a  difference  of  seven  years  in  the  ages  of 
the  two  pupils.  Vergil  coming  from  the  provinces 
entered  rhetoric  rather  late  in  years,  whereas  Oc- 
tavius  must  have  required  the  aid  of  a  master  of 
declamation  early,  since  at  the  age  of  twelve  he  pre- 
pared to  deliver  the  laudatio  funebris  at  the  grave 
of  his  grandmother.  Thus  the  two  may  have  met 
in  Epidius'  lecture  room  in  the  year  50  b.  c.  Vergil 
could  doubtless  have  afforded  tuition  under  such  a 
master  since  he  presently  engaged  the  no  less  dis- 
tinguished Siro.  We  have  the  independent  testi- 
mony of  Suetonius  that  Epidius  was  Octavius'  and 
Mark  Antony's  teacher. 

If  Antony's  style  be  a  criterion,  this  new  master  of 
Vergil's  was  a  rhetorician  of  the  elaborate  Asianistic 
style,^  then  still  orthodox  at  Rome.  This  school  — 
except  in  so  far  as  Cicero  had  criticized  it  for  going 
to  extremes  —  had  not  yet  been  effectively  chal- 

^  Octavius   was   drawn    to   the   Atticistic   principles  by   the 
great  master  Apollodorus. 


} 


SCHOOL   AND   WAR  19 

lenged  by  the  rising  generation  of  the  chaster  Atti- 
cists.  Hortensius  was  still  alive,  and  highly  revered, 
and  Cicero  had  recently  written  his  elaborate  De 
Oratore  in  which,  with  the  apparent  calmness  of  a 
still  unquestioned  authority,  he  laid  down  the  pro- 
gram of  the  writer  of  ornate  prose  who  conceived  it 
as  Ms  chief  duty  to  heed  the  claims  of  art.  While 
not  an  out  and  out  Asianist  he  advocates  the  claims  of 
the  "grand-style,"  so  pleasing  to  senatorial  audi- 
ences, with  its  well-balanced  periods,  carefully 
modulated,  nobly  phrased,  precisely  cadenced,  and 
pronounced  with  dignity.  To  be  sure,  Calvus  had 
already  raised  the  banner  of  Atticism  and  had  in 
several  biting  attacks  shown  what  a  simple,  frugal 
and  direct  style  could  accomplish  j  Calidius,  one  of 
the  first  Roman  pupils  of  the  great  Apollodorus,  had 
already  begun  making  campaign  speeches  in  his 
neatly  polished  orations  which  painfully  eschewed 
all  show  of  ornament  or  passion  j  and  Caesar  him- 
self, efficiency  personified,  had  demonstrated  that  the 
leader  of  a  democratic  rabble  must  be  a  master  of 
blunt  phrases.  But  Calvus  did  not  threaten  to  be- 
come a  political  force,  Calidius  was  too  even-tem- 
pered, and  Caesar  was  now  in  the  north,  fighting 
with  other  weapons.  Cicero's  prestige  still  seemed 
unbroken.  It  was  not  till  Caesar  crossed  the  Rubi- 
con in  49,  after  Hortensius  had  died,  and  Cicero 


> 


n 


f 


I 


111 


20  VERGIL 

had  been  pushed  aside  as  a  futile  statesman,  that 
Atticism  gained  predominance  in  the  schools.  Later, 
in  46,  Cicero  in  several  remarkable  essays  again  took 
up  the  cudgels  for  an  elaborate  prose,  but  then  his 
cause  was  already  lost.  Caesar's  victory  had  de- 
monstrated that  Rome  desired  deeds,  not  words. 

When  Virgil,  therefore,  turned  to  rhetoric,  prob- 
ably under  Epidius,  he  received  the  training  which 
was  still  considered  orthodox.     His  farewell  ^  to 
(  rhetoric  —  written  probably  in  48 — shows  unmis- 
Vtakably  the  nature  of  the  stuff  on  which  he  had  been 
(fed.    \%  is  the  bombast  and  the  futile  rules  of  the 
lAsianic  creed  against  which  he  flings  his  unsparing 
Iscazons. 

Begone  ye  useless  paint-pots  of  the  school; 
Your  phrases  reek,  but  not  with  Attic  scent, 
Tarquitius'  and  Selius'  and  Varro's  drool: 
A  witless  crew,  with  learning  temulent. 
And  ye  begone,  ye  tinkling  cymbals  vain. 
That  call  the  youths  to  drivelings  insane, 

Epidius,  to  be  sure,  is  not  mentioned,  but  we  happen 
to  know  that  Varro  —  if  this  be  the  erudite  friend  of 
Cicero  —  was  devoted  to  the  Asianic  principles. 
And  Epidius,   the  teacher   of   the   flowery   Mark 

^  Catalefton  V  (Edition,  VoUmer).  Birt,  Jugendverse  uni 
Heimatfoesie  Vergils,  1 9 10,  has  provided  a  useful  coramentary 
on  the  Catalefton. 


SCHOOL   AND   W^AR  21 

Antony,  may  well  be  concealed  in  VergiPs  list  of 
names  even  if  mention  of  him  was  omitted  for  rea- 
sons of  propriety. 

This  poem  reveals  the  fact  that  Vergil  did  not, 
like  the  young  men  of  Cicero's  youth,  enjoy  the 
privilege  of  studying  law,  court  procedure,  and  ora- 
tory by  entering  the  law  office,  as  it  were,  of  some 
distinguished  senator  and  thus  acquiring  his  craft 
through  observation,  guided  practice,  and  personal 
instruction.  That  method,  so  charmingly  described 
by  Cicero  as  in  vogue  in  his  youth,  had  almost  passed 
away.  The  school  had  taken  its  place  with  its  mock 
courts,  contests  in  oratory,  set  themes  in  fictitious 
controversies.  The  analytical  rules  of  rhetoric  were 
growing 'ever  more  intricate  and  time-wasting,  and 
how  pedantic  they  were  even  before  VergiPs  child- 
hood may  be  seen  by  a  glance  into  the  anonymous 
Auctor  ad  Herennium.  The  student  had  to  know 
the  differences  between  the  various  kinds  of  cases, 
demonstrativum,  deliberativum  and  judiciale^  he 
must  know  the  proportionate  value  to  the  orator  of 
inventio,  dispositio,  elocutio,  memoria,  and  pronun- 
tiatio,  and  how  to  manage  each;  he  must  know  how 
to  apply  inventio  in  each  of  the  six  divisions  of  the 
speech:  exordium,  narratio,  divisio,  confirmatio,  con- 
futatio,-conclusio.  On  the  subject  of  adornment  of 
style  a  relatively  small  task  lay  in  memorizing  II- 


I 


\ 


^'i 


22  VERGIL 

lustrations  of  some  sixty  figures  of  speech  —  and  so 
on  ad  infinitum.    Inane  cymbalon  juventutis  is  in- 
deed a  fitting  commentary  on  such  memory  tasks. 
The  end  of  the  poem  cited  betrays  the  fact  that  the 
poet  had  not  been  able  to  keep  his  attention  upon  his 
task.    He  had  been  writing  verses j  who  would  not? 
Quite  apart,  however,  from  the  unattractive  con- 
tent of  the  course,  the  gradual  change  in  political 
life  must  have  disclosed  to  the  observant  that  the 
free  exercise  of  talents  in  a  public  career  could  not 
:ontinue  long.     The  triumvirate  was  rapidly  sup- 
pressing the  free  republic.    Even  in  52,  when  Pom- 
pey  became  sole  consul,  the  trial  of  Milo  was  con- 
ducted under  military  guard,  and  no  advocate  dared 
speak  freely.    During  the  next  two  years  every  one 
saw  that  Caesar  and  Pompey  must  come  to  blows  and 
that  the  resulting  war  could  only  lead  to  autocracy. 
The  crisis  came  in  January  of  49  b.c.  when  Ver- 
gil was  twenty  years  old.    Pompey  with  the  consuls 
and  most  of  the  senators  fled  southward  in  dismay, 
and  in  sixty  days,  hotly  pursued  by  Caesar,  was  forced 
to  evacuate  Italy.    Caesar,  eager  to  make  short  work 
of  the  war,  to  attack  Spain  and  Africa  while  holding 
the  Alpine  passes  and  pressing  in  pursuit  of  Pompey, 
began  to  levy  new  recruits  throughout  Italy."    Ver- 
I  gil  also  seems  to  have  been  drawn  in  this  draft, 

*  Cic.  Ad  An,  IX.  19,  in  March. 


Mifiilb 


w 


ll 


SCHOOL   AND   WAR  23 

since  this  is  apparently  the  circumstance  mentioned  in 
his  thirteenth  Catalepion.  "  Draft,"  however,  may 
not  be  the  right  word,  for  we  do  not  know  whether 
Caesar  at  this  time  claimed  the  right  to  enforce  the 
rules  of  conscription.  In  any  case,  it  is  clear  from 
all  of  VergiPs  references  to  Caesar  that  the  great 
general  always  retained  a  strong  hold  upon  his  im- 
agination. Like  most  youths  who  had  beheld 
Caesar's  work  in  the  province  close  at  hand,  he  was 
probably  ready  to  respond  to  a  general  appeal  for 
troops,  and  Labienus'  words  to  Pompey  on  the  bat- 
tlefield of  Pharsalia  make  it  clear  that  Caesar's  army 
was  largely  composed  of  Cisalpines.  The  accounting 
they  gave  of  themselves  at  that  battle  is  evidence 
enough  of  the  spirit  which  pervaded  VergiPs  fel- 
low provincials.  Nor  is  it  unlikely  that  Vergil  him- 
self took  part,  for  one  of  the  most  poignant  pas- 
sages in  all  his  work  is  the  picture  of  the  dead  who 
lay  strewn  over  the  battlefield  of  Pharsalia. 

It  is  also  probable  that  Vergil  had  had  some  share 
in  the  cruises  on  the  Adriatic  conducted  by  Antony 
the  summer  and  winter  before  Pharsalia.  Not  only 
does  this  poem  speak  of  service  on  the  seas,  but  his 
poems  throughout  reveal  a  remarkable  acquaintance 
with  Adriatic  geography.  If  he  took  part  in  the 
work  of  that  stormy  winter's  campaigns,  when  more 
than  one  fleet  was  wrecked,  we  can  comprehend  the 


Vi 


I"}. 


(  ) 


24  VERGIL 

intimate  touches  in  the  description  of  Aeneas'  en- 
counters with  the  storms. 

The  thirteenth  Cataleptoriy  which  mentions  the 
poet's  military  service,  is  not  pleasant  reading. 
Written  perhaps  in  48  or  47  b.c,  directed  against 
some  hated  martinet  of  an  ofBcer,  it  bears  various  dis- 
agreeable traces  of  camp  life,  which  was  then  not 
well-guarded  by  charitable  organizations  of  every 
kind  as  now.  We  need  quote  only  the  first  few  lines:' 

You  call  me  caiti'fT,  say  I  cannot  sail 
The  seas  again,  and  that  I  seem  to  quail 
Before  the  storms  and  summer's  heat,  nor  dare 
The  speeding  victor's  arim  again  to  bear. 

We  know  how  frail  VergiPs  health  was  in  later 
years.  His  constitution  may  well  have  been  wrecked 
V  during  the  winter  of  49  which  Caesar  himself,  inured 
Vhough  he  was  to  the  storms  of  the  North,  found 
Wusually  severe.  Vergil,  it  would  seem  from  these 
1  nes,  was  given  sick-leave  and  permitted  to  go  back 
t^  his  studies,  though  apparently  taunted  for  not 
later  returning  to  the  army. 

Jacere  me,  quod  alta  non  possim,  putas 

Ut  ante,  vectari  freta. 
Nee  ferre  durum  frigus  aut  aestum  pati 

Neque  arma  victoris  sequi. 

The  verses  were  written  before  46  b.c.  when  the  collezia 
comptalicia  were   disbanded;    Birt,   Rhein.  Mus,    1910,    348. 


SCHOOL   AND   WAR  25 

There  is  another  brief  epigram  which  —  if  we 
are  right  in  thinking  Pompey  the  subject  of  the  lines 
—  seems  to  date  from  VergiPs  soldier  days,  the 
third  Catalefton: 

Aspice  quern  valido  subnixum  Gloria  regno 

Altius  et  caeli  sedibus  extulerat. 
Terrarum  hie  bello  magnum  concusserat  orbem, 

Hie  reges  Asiae  fregerat,  hie  populos, 
Hie  grave  servitium  tibi  iam,  tibi,  Roma,  ferebat 

(Cetera  namque  viri  cuspide  conciderant). 
Cum  subito  in  medio  rerum  certamine  praeceps 

Corruit,  e  patria  pulsus  in  exilium. 
Tale  deae  numen,  tali  mortalia  nutu 

Fallax  moment©  temporis  hora  dedit.® 

Whether  or  not  Pompey  aspired  to  become  auto- 
crat at  Rome,  many  of  his  supporters  not  only  be- 
lieved but  desired  that  he  should.  Cicero,  who  did 
not  desire  it,  did,  despite  his  devotion  to  his  friend, 
fear  that  Pompey  would,  if  victorious,  establish  prac- 
tically or  virtually  a  monarchy.'^    Vergil,  therefore, 

®  Behold  one  whom,  upborne  by  mighty  authority,  Glory  had 
exalted  even  above  the  abodes  of  heaven.  Earth's  great  orb  had 
he  shaken  in  war,  the  kings  and  peoples  of  Asia  had  he  broken, 
grievous  slavery  was  he  bringing  even  to  thee,  O  Rome,  —  for 
all  else  had  fallen  before  that  man's  sword,  —  when  suddenly, 
in  the  midst  of  his  struggle  for  mastery,  headlong  he  fell, 
driven  from  fatherland  into  exile.  Such  is  the  will  of  Nemesis; 
at  a  mere  nod,  in  a  moment  of  time,  the  faithless  hour  tricks 
mortal  endeavor. 

^  Cici  Ad  Atu  VIII,  II,  4 J  X,  4,  8s 


i 


% 


'■' 


I 


i.M 


26  VERGIL 

if  he  wrote  this  when  Pompey  fled  to  Greece  in  49, 
or  after  the  rout  at  Pharsalia,  was  only  giving  ex- 
pression to  a  conviction  generally  held  among 
Caesar's  officers.  Quite  Vergilian  is  the  repression 
of  the  shout  of  victory.  The  poem  recalls  the  words 
of  Anchises  on  beholding  the  spirits  of  Julius  and 
Pompey: 

Tuque  prior,  tu  parce,  genus  qui  ducis  Olympo 
Proice  tela  manu,  sanguis  meus. 

This  is  the  poet's  final  conviction  regarding  the  civil 
war  in  which  he  served)  his  first  had  not  differed 
widely  from  this. 

Vergil's  one  experience  as  advocate  in  the  court 
room  should  perhaps  be  placed  after  his  retirement 
from  the  army.    Egit,  says  Donatus,  et  causam  apud 
judices,  unam   omnino  nee  amplius  quam  semel. 
The  reason  for  his  lack  of  success  Donatus  gives  in 
the  words  of  Melissus,  a  critic  who  ought  to  know: 
in  sermone  tardissimum  ac  paene  indocto  similem. 
The  poet  himself  seems  to  allude  to  his  disappoint- 
ing failure  in  the  Ciris:  expertum  fallacis  praemia 
Ivolgi.    How  could  he  but  fail?     He  never  learned 
Oto  cram  his  convictions  into  mere  phrases,  and  his 
/  judgments  into  all-inclusive  syllogisms.    When  he 
f  has  done  his  best  with  human  behavior,  and  the  sen- 
tence is  pronounced,  he  spoils  the  whole  with  a  re- 


SCHOOL   AND   WAR  27 

bellidus  dis  aliter  visum.  A  successful  advocate 
must  know  what  not  to  see  and  feel,  and  he  must 
have  ready  convictions  at  his  tongue's  end.  In  the 
Aeneid  there  are  several  fluent  orators,  but  they  are 
never  Vergil's  congenial  characters. 


i 


i^ 


Ill 

THE   "CULEX'' 

It  was  apparently  in  the  year  48  —  Vergil  was  ^ 
then  twenty-one  —  that  the  poet  attempted  his  first 
*.  extended  composition,  the  CuleXy  a  poem  that  hardly 
deserved  the  honor  of  a  versified  translation  at  the 
hands  of  Spenser.  This  is  indeed  one  of  the  strang- 
est poems  of  Latin  literature,  an  overwhelming  bur- 
den of  mythological  and  literary  references  saddled 
on  the  feeblest  of  fables. 

A  shepherd  goes  out  one  morning  with  his  flocks 
to  the  woodland  glades  whose  charms  the  poet  de- 
scribes at  length  in  a  rather  imitative  rhapsody.    The 
shepherd  then  falls  asleep^  a  serpent  approaches  and 
is  about  to  strike  him  when  a  gnat,  seeing  the  danger, 
stings  him  in  time  to  save  him.     But  —  such  is  the 
fatalism  of  cynical  fable-lore  —  the  shepherd,  still 
in  a  stupor,  crushes  the  gnat  that  has  saved. his  life. 
At  night  the  gnat's  ghost  returns  to  rebuke  the  shep- 
herd for  his  innocent  ingratitude,  and  rather  in- 
appropriately remains  to  rehearse  at  great  length  the 
tale  of  what  shades  of  old  heroes  he  has  seen  in  the 
lower  regions.    The  poem  contains  414  lines. 

28 


^'^f^,. 


THE    "CULEX"  29 

The  Culex  has  been  one  of  the  standing  puzzles 
of  literary  criticism,  and  would  be  interesting,  if 
only  to  illustrate  the  inadequacy  of  stylistic  criteria. 
Though  it  was  accepted  as  Vergilian  by  Renaissance 
readers  simply  because  the  manuscripts  of  the  poem* 
and  ancient  writers,  from  Lucan  and  Statius  to 
Martial  and  Suetonius,  all  attribute  the  work  to  him, 
recent  critics  have  usually  been  skeptical  or  down- 
right recusant.  Some  insist  that  it  is  a  forgery  or  sup- 
posititious workj  others  that  it  is  a  liberally  padded 
re-working  of  Vergil's  original.  Only  a  few  have 
accepted  it  as  a  very  youthful  failure  of  VergiPs,  or 
as  an  attempt  of  the  poet  to  parody  the  then  popular 
romances.  Recent  objections  have  not  centered 
about  metrical  technique,  diction,  or  details  of  style: 
these  are  now  admitted  to  be  Vergilian  enough,  or 
rather  what  might  well  have  been  Vergilian  at  the 
outset  of  his  career.  The  chief  criticism  is  directed 
against  a  want  of  proportion  and  an  apparent  lack  of  \ 
artistic  sense  betrayed  in  choosing  so  strange  a  thar-  * 
acter  for  the  ponderous  title-role.  These  are  faults 
that  Vergil  later  does  not  betray. 

Nevertheless,  Vergil  seems  to  have  written  the/ 
poem.    Its  ascription  to  Vergil  by  so  many  authors 
of  the  early  empire,  as  well  as  the  concensus  of  the 
manuscripts,  must  be  taken  very  seriously.    But  the 
internal  evidence  is  even  stronger.     Octavius,  to 


I 


f 


'I 


y 


il 
If 


30  VERGIL' 

whom  the  poem  is  dedicated,  is  addressed  Octavi 
venerande  and  sancte  fuer,  a  clear  reference  to  the 
remarkable  honor  that  Caesar  secured  for  him  by 
election  to  the  office  of  pontiff^  when  he  was  ap- 
proaching his  fifteenth  birthday  and  before  he  as- 
sumed the  toga  virilis.    Vergil  was  then  twenty-one 
years  of  age  —  nearing  his  twenty-second  birthday 
—  and  we  may  perhaps  assume  in  Donatus'  attri- 
bution of  the  Culex  to  VergiPs  sixteenth  year  a 
mistake  in  some  early  manuscript  which  changed  the 
original  XXI  to  XVI,  a  correction  which  the  ci- 
tations of  Statius  and  Lucan  favor.^    Finally,  when, 
as  we  shall  see  presently,  Horace  in  his  second  Epode, 
(accords  Vergil  the  honor  of  imitating  a  passage  of  the 
)Culex,    Vergil    returns    the    compliment    in    his 
Veorgics.    We  have  therefore  not  only  VergiPs  re- 
cognition of  Horace's  courtesy,  but,  in  his  acceptance 
d^  it,  his  acknowledgment  of  the  Culex  as  his  own.^ 

J-  VelHus,  II.  59,  3,  pontificatus  sacerdotio  fuerum  honoravlt, 
that  is,  before  he  assumed  the  toga  virilis  on  October  i8th. 
Nicolaus  Damascenus  (4)  confirms  this.  Octavius  received  the 
office  made  vacant  by  the  death  of  Domitius  at  Pharsalia  (Aug. 
9).  His  birthday  was  Sept.  23,  63.  This  high  office  is  the  first 
mdication  that  Caesar  had  chosen  his  grandnephew  to  be  his 
possible  successor.  The  boy  was  hardly  known  at  Rome  before 
this  time.    See  Classical  Philology,  1920,  p.  26. 

2  Anderson,  in  Classical  Quarterly,  1 91 6,  p.  225;  and  Class, 
Phil,  1920,  p.  26.  The  dedicatory  lines  of  the  Culex  imply 
that  the  body  of  the  poem  was  already  complete.  Whether 
the  interval  was  one  of  weeks  or  months  or  years  the  poet  does 
not  say,  ^  classical  Philology^  1920,  pp.  23,  33. 


THE    "CULEX"  31 

The  Culex,  therefore,  is  the  work  of  a  beginner 
addressed  to  a  young  lad  just  highly  honored,  but 
after  all  to  a  schoolboy  whom  Vergil  had,  presum- 
ably two  years  before,  met  in  the  lecture  rooms  of 
Epidius.  Does  this  provide  a  key  with  which  to  un- 
lock the  hidden  intentions  of  our  strange  treasure- 
trove  of  miscellaneous  allusions  .J^  Let  the  reader  re- 
member the  nature  of  the  literary  lectures  of  that  day 
when  dictionaries,  reference  books,  and  encyclopedias 
were  not  yet  to  be  found  in  every  library,  and  school 
texts  were  not  yet  provided  with  concise  Allen  and 
Greenough  notes.  The  teacher  alone  could  afford 
the  voluminous  "cribs''  of  Didymus.  Roman 
schoolboys  had  not,  like  the  Greeks,  drunk  in  all 
myths  by  the  easy  process  of  nursery  babble.  By 
them  the  legends  of  Homer  and  Euripides  must  be 
acquired  through  painful  schoolroom  exegesis.  Even 
the  names  of  natural  objects,  like  trees,  birds,  and 
beasts  came  into  literature  with  their  Greek  names, 
which  had  to  be  explained  to  the  Roman  boys. 
Hence  the  teacher  of  literature  at  Rome  must  waste 
much  time  upon  elucidating  the  text,  telling  the 
myths  in  full,  and  giving  convenient  compendia  of 
metamorphoses,  of  Homeric  heroes,  of  "  trees  and 
flowers  of  the  poets,"  and  the  like.  Epidius  himself, 
a  pedagogue  of  the  progressive  style,  had  doubtless 
proved  an  adept  at  this  sort  of  thing.    Claiming  to  be 


fi 


M 


i 


IP 


32  VERGIL 

a  descendant  of  an  ancient  hero  who  had  one  day 
transformed  himself  into  a  river-god,  he  must  have 
had  a  knack  for  these  tales.    At  any  rate  we  are  told 
that  he  wrote  a  book  on  metamorphosed  trees.* 
When  Octavius  read  the  Culex,  did  he  recognize  in 
the  quaint  passage  describing  the  shepherd's  grove 
of  metamorphosed  trees  (124-145)  phrases  from 
the  lecture  notes  of  their  voluble  teacher?     Are 
there  reminiscences  lurking  also  in  the  long  list  of 
flowers  so  incongruously  massed  about  the  gnat's 
grave  and  in  the  two  hundred  lines  that  detail  the 
ghostly  census  of  Hades?    If  this  is  a  parody  at  all, 
It  is  to  remind  Octavius  of  Epidian  erudition.    In  any 
case  it  is  a  kind  of  prompter  of  the  poetic  allusions 
that  occupied  the  boys'  hours  at  school.    The  simple 
plot  of  the  shepherd  and  the  gnat  was  selected  from 
the  type  of  fable  lore  thought  suitable  for  school- 
joom  reading.    It  served  by  its  very  incongruity  as 
/a  suitable  thread  for  a  catalogue  of  facts  and  fiction. 
VVergil  himself  furnishes  the  clue  for  this  interpret 
itation  of  the  Culex,  but  it  has  been  overlooked  be- 
cause of  the  wretched  condition  of  the  ttxt  that  we 
(have.    The  first  lines  ^  of  the  poem  seem  to  mean: 

•  U^:^:  ^"'-  ^"-  '^^'  ^"^^°"^"^'  ^^  Metoribus,  4. 

lusimus  (haec  propter  culicis  sint  carmina  docta. 
omnis  ut  historiae  per  ludum  consonet  ordo 
notitiae)  doctumque  voces,  licet  invidus  adsit 


THE    "CULEX"  33 

"My  verses  on  the  Culex  shall  be  filled  with  eru- 
dition so  that  all  the  lore  of  the  past  may  be  strung 
together  playfully  in  the  form  of  a  story."  That 
Martial  considered  it  a  boy's  book  appropriate  for 
vacation  hours  between  school  tasks  is  apparent  from 
the  inscription:  ® 

Accipe  facundi  Culiceniy  studiose,  Maronis, 
Ne  nucibus  positis,  Arma  virumque  legas. 

The  Culex  is  then,  after  all,  a  poem  of  unique  in- 
terest j  it  takes  us  into  the  Roman  schoolroom  to  find 
at  their  lectures  the  two  lads  whose  names  come  first 
in  the  honor  roll  of  the  golden  age. 
/  The  poem  is  of  course  not  a  masterpiece,  nor  was 
it  intended  to  be  anything  but  a  tour  de  force;  but  a 
comprehension  of  its  purpose  will  at  least  save  it 
from  being  judged  by  standards  not  applicable  to  it. 
It  is  not  naively  and  unintentionally  incongruous. 
To  the  modern  reader  it  is  dull  because  he  has  at 
hand  far  better  compendia;  it  is  uninspired  no  doubt: 
the  theme  did  not  lend  itself  to  enthusiastic  treat- 
ment; the  obscurity  and  awkwardness  of  expression 
and  the  imitative  phraseology  betray  a  young  un- 
formed style.  To  analyze  the  art,  however,  would 
be  to  take  the  poem  more  seriously  than  Vergil  in- 
tended it  to  be  when  he  wrote  currente  calamo.    Yet 

«  Martial,  XIV.  185. 


I 


'I  i 


I 


II 


34  VERGIL' 

*  we  may  say  that  on  the  whole  the  modulation  of  the 
/  verse,  the  treatment  of  the  caesural  pauses '  and  the 
phrasing  compare  rather  favorably  with  the  Catullan 
I     hexameters  which  obviously  served  as  its  models, 
that  in  the  best  lines  the  poet  shows  himself  sensi- 
I        tive  to  delicate  effects,  and  that  the  pastoral  scene  — 

which  Horace  compliments  a  few  years  later is 

despite  its  imitative  notes,  written  with  enthusiasm, 
and  reminds  us  pleasantly  of  the  Eclogues. 

^  For  stylistic  and  metrical  studies  of  the  Culex,  see  Thfi 
Caesura  tn  Vergil,  Butcher,  Classical  Quarterly,  1914,  p.  12  v 
Hardie,  Journal  of  Philology,  XXXI,  p.  266,  and  Class  Guar i 
1916,  32  ff.;  Miss  Jackson,  Ibid.  191 1,  163 j  Warde  Fowler, 
Llass,  Rev,  1919,  96* 


IV 

THE  "CIRIS?? 

It  was  at  about  this  same  time,  48  b.  c,  that  Ver- 
gil began  to*  write  the  Ciris^  a  romantic  epyllion 
which  deserves  far  more  attention  than  it  has  re- 
ceived, not  only  as  an  invaluable  document  for  thej 
history  of  the  poet's  early  development,  but  as  a 
poem  possessing  in  some  passages  at  least  real  artis- 
tic merit.  The  Ciris  was  not  yet  completed  at  the 
time  when  Vergil  reached  the  momentous  decision  to 
go  to  Naples  and  study  philosophy.  He  apparently 
laid  it  aside  and  did  not  return  to  it  until  he  had  been 
in  Naples  several  years.  It  was  not  till  later  that 
he  wrote  the  dedication.  As  we  shall  see,  the  author 
again  laid  the  poem  away,  and  it  was  not  published 
till  after  his  death.  The  preface  written  in  Siro's 
garden  is  addressed  to  Messalla,  who  was  a  student 
at  Athens  in  45-4  b.  c,  and  served  in  the  republi- 
can army  of  Brutus  and  Cassius  in  43-2.  In  it  Ver- 
gil begs  pardon  for  sending  a  poem  of  so  trivial  a 
nature  at  a  time  when  his  one  ambition  is  to  describe 
worthily  the  philosophic  system  that  he  has  adopted. 
"  Nevertheless,"  he  says,  "  accept  meanwhile  this 

35 


I 


I 


■  '\\ 


1 


('*'■ 


36  VERGIL 

poem:  it  is  all  that  I  can  offer j  upon  it  I  have  spent 
the  efforts  of  early  youth.  Long  since  the  vow  was 
made,  and  now  is  fulfilled."    (Cirisj  42-7.)  ' 

The  story,  beginning  at  line  10 1,  was  familiar. 

Minos,  King  of  Crete,  had  laid  siege  to  Megara, 

whose  king,  Nisus,  had  been  promised  invincibility 

by  the  oracles  so  long  as  his  crimson  lock  remained 

untouched.    Scylla,  the  daughter  of  Nisus,  however, 

was  driven  by  Juno  to  fall  in  love  with  Minos,  her 

father's  enemy-  and,  to  win  his  love,  she  yields  to 

the  temptation  of  betraying  her  father  to  Minos. 

The  picture  of  the  girl  when  she  had  decided  to  cut 

the  charmed  lock  of  hair,  groping  her  way  in  the 

dark,    tiptoe,    faltering,   rushing,    terrified    at   the 

fluttering  of  her  own  heart,  is  an  interesting  attempt 

at  intensive  art:  209-219: 

cum  furtim  tacfto  descendens  Scylla  cubfh* 
aurfbus  erectis  nocturna  silentia  temptat 
ct  pressis  tenuem  singultibus  aera  captat. 
turn  suspensa  levans  dfgitis  vestigia  primis 
egreditur  ferroque  manus  armata  bidenti 
evolat:  at  demptae  subita  in  formidine  vires 
caeruleas  sua  furta  prius  testantur  ad  umbras, 
nam  qua  se  ad  patrium  tendebat  semita  h'men, 
vestibulo  in  thalami  paulum  remoratur  et  alti 
suspicit  ad  gelidi  nictantia  sidera  mundi 
non  accepta  piisi  promittens  munera  divis. 

103  ?  ^^^  '^''^'^'''"  ""^  authenticity,  see.  Class.   Phil.    1920, 


THE    "CIRIS"  37 

Her  aged  nurse,  Carme,  comes  upon  the  bewildered 
and  shivering  girl,  folds  her  in  her  robe,  and  coaxes 
the  awful  confession  from  her 3  250-260: 

haec  loquitur  mollique  ut  se   velavit  amictu 
frigidulam   iniecta  circumdat   veste   puellam, 
quae  prius  in  tenui  steterat  succincta  crocota. 
dulcia  deinde  genis  rorantibus  oscula  iigens 
persequitur  miserae  causas  exquirere  tabis. 
nee  tamen  ante  ullas  patitur  sibi  reddere  voces, 
marmoreum  tremebunda  pedem  quam  rettulit  intra, 
ilia  autem  "  quid  me  "  inquit,  "  nutricula,  torques? 
quid  tantum  properas  nostros  novisse  furores? 
non  effo  consueto  mortalibus  uror  amore." 

Scylla  does  not  readily  confess.  The  poet's  charac- 
terization of  her  as  she  protracts  the  story  to  avoid 
the  final  confession  reveals  an  ambitious  though 
somewhat  unpracticed  art.  Carme  tries  in  vain  to 
dissuade  the  girl,  and  must,  to  calm  her,  promise  to 
aid  her  if  all  other  means  fail.  The  aged  woman's  (^ 
tenderness  for  her  foster  child  is  very  effectively 
phrased  in  a  style  not  without  reminiscences  ofj 
Catullus  (340-48): 

his  ubi   soUicitos  animi   relevaverat  aestus 
vocibus  et  blanda  pectus  spe  luserat  aegrum, 
paulatim  tremebunda  genis  obducere  vestem 
virginis  et  placidam  tenebris  captare  quietem 
inverse  bibulum  restinguens  lumen  olivo 
incipit  ad  crebros  (que)  insani  pectoris  ictus 
ferre  manum  assiduis  mulcens  praecordia  palmis. 
noctem  illam  sic  maesta  super  morientis  alumnae 
frigidulos  cubito  subnixa  pependit  ocellos. 


( 

Hi 


V 


'i 


;     I 
1   , 


t  • 

'i 


I. 


38  VERGIL 

On  the  morrow  the  girl  pleads  with  her  father  to 
make  peace,  with  humorous  naivete  argues  with  the 
counsellors  of  state,  tries  to  bribe  the  seers,  and 
finally  resorts  to  magic.    When  nothing  avails,  she 
secures  Carme's  aid.    The  lock  is  cut,  the  city  falls, 
the  girl  is  captured  by  Minos  —  in  true  Alexandrian 
technique  the  catastrophe  comes  with  terrible  speed 
—  and  she  is  led,  not  to  marriage,  but  to  chains  on 
the  captor's  galley.     Her  grief  is  expressed  in  a 
long     soliloquy     somewhat     too    reminiscent     of 
Ariadne's  lament  in  Catullus.    Finally,  Amphitrite 
in  pity  transforms  the  captive  girl  into  a  bird,  the 
Ciris,  and  Zeus  as  a  reward  for  his  devout  life  re- 
leases Nisus,  also  transforming  him  into  a  bird  of 
prey,  and  henceforth  there  has  been  eternal  warfare 
between  the  Ciris  and  the  Nisus: 

quacunque  ilia  levem  fugiens  secat  aethera  pennis, 
cccc  inimicus  atrox  magno  stridorc  per  auras 
insequitur  Nisus;  qua  se  fert  Nisus  ad  auras, 
ilia  levem  fugiens  raptim  secat  aethera  pennis.^ 

The  Ciris  with  all  its  flaws  is  one  of  our  best 
examples  of  the  romantic  verse  tales  made  popular 
by  the  Alexandrian  poets  of  Callimachus'  school.^ 
Tlie  old  legends  had  of  course  been  told  in  epic  or 
dramatic  form,  but  changing  society  now  cared  less 
for  the  stirring  action  and  bloodshed  that  had  enter- 

^  These  four  lines  occur  again  in  the  Georgics,  I,  406-9. 


THE   "CIRIS"  39 

tained  the  early  Greeks.    The  times  were  ripe  for  a 
retelling  from  a  different  point  of  view,  with  a  more^, 
patient  analysis  of  the  emotions,  of  the  inner  im4 
pulses  of  the  moment  before  the  blow,  the  battle  of  N 
passions  that  preceded  the  final  act.    We  notice  also  I 
in  these  new  poems  a  preponderance  of  feminine  I 
characters.   These  the  masculine  democracy  of  classi-  I 
cal  Athens  had  tended  to  disregard,  but  in  the  capi-    ^ 
tals  of  the  new  Hellenistic  monarchies,  many  in-    ( 
fluential  and  brilliant  women  rose  to  positions  of    / 
power  in  the  society  of  the  court.    A  poet  would  have 
been  dull  not  to  respond  to  this  influence.  This  new 
note  was  of  course  one  that  would  immediately  appeal 
to  the  Romans,  for  the  ancient  aristocracy,  which  had 
always  accorded  woman  a  high  place  in  society  and 
the  home,  had  never  died  out  at  Rome.    Indeed  such 
early  dramatists  as  Ennius  and  Accius  had  already 
felt  the  need  of  developing  the  interest  of  feminine 
roles  when  they  paraphrased  classical  Greek  plays  for 
their  audiences.     Thus  both  at  Alexandria  and  at 
Rome  the  new  poets  naturally  chose  the  more  ro- 
mantic myths  of  the  old  regal  period  as  fit  for  their 
retelling.  \ 

But  the  search  for  a  different  interpretation  andi 
a  deeper  content  induced  a  new  method  of  narration.  I 
Indeed  the  stories  themselves  were  too  well  known] 
to  need  a  full  rehearsal  of  the  plot.    Action  mightl 


I 


'W''   i 


H; 


•1i 


M 


40  VERGIL 

ffrequently  be  assumed  as  known  and  relegated  to  a 
jsignificant  line  or  two  here  and  there.  The  scenic 
setting,  the  individual  traits  of  the  heroes  and 
heroines,  their  mental  struggles,  their  silent  doubts 
and  hesitations,  became  the  chief  concern  of  the  new 
poets.  Horace  called  this  the  "purple-patch" 
method  of  writing. 

The  narrative  devices,  however,  varied  somewhat. 
Some  poets  discarded  all  idea  of  form.  They 
roamed  through  the  woods  by  any  path  that  might 
appear.  This  is  the  way  that  Tibullus  likes  to  treat 
a  theme.  Whatever  semi-apposite  topic  happens  to 
suggest  itself,  provided  only  it  contains  pleasing 
fancies,  invites  him  to  tarry  a  while  j  he  may  or  may 
not  bring  you  back  to  the  starting  point.  Other 
poets  still  adhere  to  form,  though  the  pattern  must 
be  elaborate  enough  to  hide  its  scheme  from  the 
casual  reader,  and  sufficiently  elastic  to  provide  space 
for  sentiment  and  pathos.  In  his  sixty-eighth 
poem  Catullus  employs  what  might  be  called  a 
geometrical  pattern,  in  fact  a  pyramid  of  un- 
equal steps.  He  mounts  to  the  central  theme 
by  a  series  of  verses  and  descends  on  the  other 
side  by  a  corresponding  series.  In  the  sixty-fourth 
poem,  however,  the  efyllion  which  the  author 
of  the  Ciris  clearly  had  in  mind,  Catullus  used  an 
intricate  but  by  no  means  balanced  form.    The  poem 


THE    "CIRIS"  41 

opens  with  the  sea  voyage  of  Peleus  on  which  he 
meets  the  sea-nymph,  Thetis.  Then  the  poet  leaps 
over  the  interval  to  the  marriage  feast,  only  to 
dwell  upon  the  sorrows  of  Ariadne  depicted  on  the 
coverlet  of  the  marriage  couch  j  thence  he  takes  us 
back  to  the  causes  of  Ariadne's  woes,  thence  f  on^'ard 
to  the  vengeance  upon  Ariadne's  faithless  lover; 
then  back  to  the  second  scene  embroidered  on  the 
tapestry;  and  now  finally  to  the  wedding  itself  which 
ends  with  the  Fates'  wedding  song  celebrating  the 
future  glories  of  Peleus'  promised  son. 

The  Ciris  J  to  be  sure,  is  not  quite  so  intricate,  but 
here  again  we  have  only  allusions  to  the  essential 
parts  of  the  story:  how  Scylla  oflFended  Juno,  how 
she  met  Minos,  how  she  cut  the  lock,  and  how  the 
city  was  taken.    We  are  not  even  told  why  Minos 
failed  to  keep  his  pledge  to  the  maiden.     In  the 
midst  of  the  tale,  Carme  suspends  the  action  by  a 
long  reference  to  Minos'  earlier  passion  for  her  own 
daughter,  Britomartis,  which  caused  the  girl's  de-. 
struction,  but  the  lament  in  which  this  story  is  dis- 
closed  merely  alludes  to  but  does  not  tell  the  details  j 
of  the  story.    The  whole  plot  of  the  Ciris  is  in  fact  "H 
unravelled  by  means  of  a  series  «f  allusions  and    I 
suggestions,    exclamations    and    soliloquies,    paren-    \ 
theses  and  aposiopeses,  interrogations  and  apostro-    ; 
phes. 


•»i 


lir 


i  ' 

V 


42  VERGIL 

In  verse-technique  ^  the  Ciris  is  as  near  Catullus' 
Peleus  and  Thetis  as  it  is  the  Aeneid:  indeed  it  is  as 
reminiscent  of  the  former  as  it  is  prophetic  of  the 
latter.  The  spondaic  ending  which  made  the  line 
linger,  usually  over  some  word  of  emotional  content, 
(1.  ij8): 

At  levis  ille  deus,  cui  semper  ad  ulciscendum 

was  to  Cicero  the  earmark  of  this  style.  The  Ciris  has 
it  less  often  than  Catullus.  Being  somewhat  unjustly 
criticized  as  an  artifice  it  was  usually  avoided  in  the 
Aeneid.  There  are  more  harsh  elisions  in  the  Ciris 
than  in  the  poet's  later  work,  reminding  one  again 
of  CatuUan  technique.  In  his  use  of  caesuras  Vergil 
in  the  Ciris  resembles  Catullus:  both  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent distrust  the  trochaic  pause.  Its  yielding  quality, 
however,  brought  it  back  into  more  favor  in  various 
emotional  passages  of  the  Aeneid;  but  there  it  is 
carefully  modified  by  the  introduction  of  masculine 
stops  before  and  after,  a  nuance  which  is  hardly 
sought  after  in  the  Ciris  or  in  Catullus.  Finally,  the 
sentence  structure  has  not  yet  attained  the  mallea 


-t 


*  See  especially  Skutsch,  Aus  Vergils  Fruhzeity  p.  74;  Drach- 
mann,  Hermes y  1908,  p.  412  ff.;  L.  G.  Eldridge,  Num  Culex 
et  Ciris,  etc.  Giessen,  191 4;  Rand,  Harvard  Studies,  XXX,  p. 
150.  The  introduction  which  was  written  last  is  more  reminis- 
cent of  Lucretius.  On  the  question  of  authenticity,  see  Drach- 
mann,  loc.  cit,  Vollmer,  Sitz.  Bayer,  Akad.  1907,  335,  and 
VirgiPs  Af^enticeshify  Class »  PhiL  1920,  p.  103, 


THE   "CIRIS 


i> 


43 


{ bility  of  a  later  day.  While  the  Ciris ^  like  the  Peleus 
\nd  Thetisj  is  over-free  with  involved  and  paren- 
thetical sentences,  it  has  on  the  whole  fewer  run- 
over  lines  so  that  indeed  the  frequent  coincidence  of 
sense  pauses  and  verse  endings  almost  borders  on 
monotony. 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  minor  details  that  show 
Vergil  in  his  youth  a  close  reader  of  Catullus,  and 
doubtless  of  Calvus,  Cinna  and  Comificius,  who  em- 
ployed the  same  methods.  It  was  from  this  group, 
not  from  Homer  or  Ennius,  that  Vergil  learned  his 
verse-technique.  The  exquisite  finish  of  the  Aeneid 
was  the  product  of  this  technique  meticulously  re- 
worked to  the  demands  of  an  exacting  poetic  taste.  *=- 
^  The  Ciris  gave  Vergil  his  first  lesson  in  serious 
poetic  composition,  and  no  task  could  have  been  set 
of  more  immediate  value  for  the  training  of  Rome's 
epic  poet.  In  a  national  epic  classical  objectivity 
could  not  sufiice  for  a  people  that)  had  grown  so  self- 
conscious.  Epic  poetry  must  become  more  subjec- 
tive at  Rome  or  perish.  To  be  sure  the  vices  of  the^ 
episodic  style  must  be  pruned  away,  and  they  were, 
mercilessly.  The  Aeneid  has  none  of  the  meretri- 
cious involutions  of  plot,  none  of  the  puzzling  half- 
uttered  allusions  to  essential  facts,  none  of  the  teas- 
ing interruptions  of  the  neoteric  story  book.  The 
poet  also  learned  to  avoid  the  danger  of  stressing 


to 


:j  . 


i( 


i  > 


It 


■I 


Pi 


M 


( 


44  VERGIL 

trivial  and  impertinent  pathos,  and  he  rejected  the 
elegancies  of  style  that  threatened  to  lead  to  preci- 
osity. What  he  kept,  however,  was  of  permanent 
value.  The  new  poetry,  which  had  emerged  from 
a  society  that  was  deeply  interested  in  science,  had 
taught  Vergil  to  observe  the  details  of  nature  with 
accuracy  and  an  appreciation  of  their  beauty.  It  had 
also  taught  him  that  in  an  age  of  sophistication  the 
poet  should  not  hide  his  personality  wholly  behind 
the  veil.  There  is  a  pleasing  self -consciousness  in 
tjie  poet's  reflections  —  never  too  obtrusive  —  that 
reminds  one  of  Catullus.  It  implies  that  poetry  is 
recognized  in  its  great  role  of  a  criticism  of  life. 
But  most  .of  all  there  is  revealed  in  the  Ciris  an  epic 
poet's  first  timid  probing  into  the  depths  of  human 
emotions,  a  striving  to  understand  the  riddles  behind 
the  impulsive  body.  One  sees  why  Dido  is  not,  like 
ApoUonius'  Medea,  simply  driven  to  passion  by 
Cupid's  arrow  —  the  naive  Greek  equivalent  of  the 
medieval  love-philter  —  why  Pallas'  body  is  not 
merely  laid  on  the  funeral  pyre  with  the  traditional 
wailing,  why  Turnus  does  not  meet  his  foe  with  an 
Homeric  boast.  That  Vergil  has  penetrated  a  richer 
vein  of  sentiment,  that  he  has  learned  to  regard  pas- 
sion as  something  more  than  an  accident,  to  sacrifice 
mere  logic  of  form  for  fragments  of  vital  emotion 
and  flashes  of  new  scenery,  and  finally  that  he  en- 


ii| 


k  < 


THE    "CIRIS"  45 

riched  the  Latin  vocabulary  with  fecund  words  are 
in  no  small  measure  the  effect  of  his  early  intensive 
work  on  the  Ciris  under  the  tutelage  o£  Catullus. 

Vergil  apparently  never  published  the  Ciris,  for 
he  re-used  its  lines,  indeed  whole  blocks  of  its  lines 
with  a  freedom  that  cannot  be  paralleled^*  The  much 
discussed  line  of  the  fourth  Eclogue: 

Cara  deum  suboles,  magnum  Jovis  incrementum, 

is  from  the  Ciris  (1.  398),  so  is  the  familiar  verse  of 
Eclogue  Will  (L  41): 

Ut  vidi,  ut  peril,  ut  me  malus  abstulit  error, 


and  Aeneid  II.  405: 

Ad  caelum  tendens  ardentia  lumina  frustra, 

and    the    strange    spondaic    unelided    line    {A  en. 

111.74): 

Nereidum  matri  et  Neptuno  Aegaeo, 

and  a  score  of  others.  The  only  reasonable  ex- 
planation ^  of  this  strange  fact  is  that  the  Ciris  had 
not  been  circulated,  that  its  lines  were  still  at  the 
poet's  disposal,  and  that  he  did  not  suppose  the  origi- 
nal would  ever  be  published.     The  fact  that  the 

'  Drachmann,  Hermes ^  1908,  p.  405, 


)  I 


I 


H 


m  I     ■  ■««, 


M 


¥e 


46  VERGIL" 

process  of  re-usmg  began  even  in  the  Eclogues^ 
shows  that  he  had  decided  to  reject  the  poem  as  early 
as  41  B.  C.  A  reasonable  explanation  is  near  at 
hand.  Messalla,  to  whom  the  poem  was  dedicated, 
joined  his  lot  with  that  of  Mark  Antony  and  Egypt 
after  the  battle  of  Philippi,  and  for  Antony  Vergil 
had  no  love.  The  poem  lay  neglected  till  he  lost 
interest  in  a  style  of  work  that  was  passing  out  of 
fashion.  Finding  a  more  congenial  form  in  the  pas- 
toral he  sacrificed  the  Ciris. 

*  Especially  in  8,  lO,  and  4.  This  method  of  re-working 
old  lines  reveals  an  extraordinary  gift  of  memory  in  the  poet, 
who  so  vividly  retained  in  mind  every  line  he  had  written 
that  each  might  readily  fall  into  the  pattern  of  his  new  compo- 
sitions without  leaving  a  trace  of  the  joining.  Critics  who  have 
tried  the  task  have  been  compelled  to  confess  that  the  criterion 
of  contextual  appropriateness  cannot  alone  determine  whether 
or  not  these  lines  Erst  occorred  in  the  Ciris, 


I 


'.  .1' 


A   STUDENT   OF   PHILOSOPHY 

AT   NAPLES 

The  Culex  seems  to  have  been  completed  in 
September  48  b.  c,  and  the  main  part  of  the  Ciris 
was  written  not  much  later.    Now  came  a  crisis  in 
VergiPs  affairs.    Perhaps  his  own  experience  in  the 
law  courts,  or  the  conviction  that  public  life  could 
contain  no  interest  under  an  autocracy,  or  disgust  at 
rhetorical  futility,  or  perhaps  a  copy  of  Lucretius    , 
brought  him  to  a  stop.    Lucretius  he  certainly  had   / 
been  reading;  of  that  the  Ciris  provides  unmistakable  / 
evidence.    And  the  spell  of  that  poet  he  never  es-/ 
caped.    His  farewell  to  Rome  and  rhetoric  has  been/ 
quoted  in  part  above.    The  end  of  the  poem  bids  — f 
though  more  reluctantly  —  farewell  to  the  musefe 
also:  / 

Ite  hinc  Camenae;  vos  quoque  ite  jam  sane 
dulces  Camenae    (nam   fatebimur   verum, 
dukes   fuistis):  at  tamen   meas  chartas 
revisitote,  sed  pudenter  et  rare. 


It  is  to  Siro  that  he  now  went,  the  Epicurean  philoso- 
pher who,  closely  associated  with  the  voluminous 

47 


1 


m 


i 


i 


I..:: 


I 


H 


48  VERGIL 

Philodemus,  was  conducting  a  very  popular  garden- 
school  at  Naples,  outranking  in  fact  the  original 
school  at  Athens.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  this  is  where 
Lucretius  himself  had  studied. 

t  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  ensuing  years 
f  philosophical  study  were  spent  at  Naples  —  a 
reek  city  then  —  and  very  largely  among  Greeks. 
This  fact  provides  a  key  to  much  of  Vergil.  Our 
'biographies  have  somehow  assumed  Rome  as  the 
center  of  Siro's  activities,  though  the  evidence  in 
favor  of  Naples  is  unmistakable.  Not  only  does 
Vergil  speak  of  a  journey  (Catal.  V.  8): 

Nos  ad  beatos   vela   mittimus   portus 
Magni    petentes   docta   dicta   Sironis, 

and  Servius  say  Neapoli  studuHy  and  the  Ciris  men- 
)  tion  Cecropus  hortulusy  and  Cicero  in  all  his  ref er- 
\  ences  place  Siro  on  the  bay  of  Naples,^  but  a  frag- 
ment of  a  Herculanean  roll  of  Philodemus  locates 
:he  garden  school  in  the  suburbs  of  Naples. 

Even  after  Siro's  death  —  about  42  b.  c.  —  Ver- 
gil seems  to  have  remained  at  Naples,  probably  in- 
(  heriting  his  teacher's  villa.     In  38  he  with  Varius 
^^and  Plotius  came  up  from  Naples  to  Sinuessa  to 

^  De  Fin,  II.  119,  Cumaean  villa;  Acad.  II.  106,  Bauli;  Ad, 
Torn,  VI.  1 1.2;  Vestorius  is  a  Neapolitan;  cf.  Class.  Phil.  1920, 
p.  107,  and  Am.  Jour.  Philology ^  XLI,  115.  For  other  possi- 
ble references,  see  Am.  Jour.  Phil.  1920,  XLI,  280  flf. 


A   STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY  49 

join  Maecenas'  party  on  their  journey  to  Brun- 
disiumj  Vergil  wrote  the  Georgics  at  Naples  in  the 
thirties  {Georg.  IV.  460),  and  Donatus  actually  re- 
marks that  the  poet  was  seldom  seen  at  Rome. 

As  the  charred  fragments  of  Philodemus'  rolls  are 
published  one  by  ooe,  we  begin  to  realize  that  the 
students  of  Vergil  have  failed  to  appreciate  the  in- 
fluences which  must  have  reached  the  young  poet  in 
these  years  of  his  life  in  a  Greek  city  in  daily  com- 
munion with  oriental  philosophers  like  Philodemus 
and  Siro.    After  the  death  of  Phaedrus  these  men 
were  doubtless  the  leaders  of  their  sectj  at  least 
Asconius  calls  the  former  ilia  aetate  nobilissimus  {In 
Pis.  68).    Cicero  represents  them  as  homines  doctis- 
simos  as  early  as  60  b.  c,  and  though  in  his  tirade 
against  Piso  —  ten  years  before  VergiPs  adhesion  to 
the  school  —  he  must  needs  cast  some  slurs  at  Piso's 
teacher,  he  is  careful  to  compliment  both  his  learn- 
ing and  his  poetry.    Indeed  there  seems  to  be  not 
a  little  direct  use  of  Philodemus'  works  in  Cicero's 
De  finibus  and  the  De  natura  deorum  written  many 
years  later.    In  any  case,  at  least  Catullus,  Horace, 
and  Ovid  made  free  to  paraphrase  some  of  his  epi- 
grams.   And  these  verses  may  well  guard  us  against 
assuming  that  the  man  who  could  draw  to  his  lectures 
and  companionship  some  of  the  brightest  spirits  of 
the  day  is  adequately  represented  by  the  crabbed 


^;.!i 


li 


>(i| 


» 


\'Y 


50  VERGIL 

controversial  essays  that  his  library  has  produced. 
These  essays  follow  a  standard  type  and  do  not 
necessarily  reveal  the  actual  man.  Even  these,  how- 
ever, disclose  a  man  not  wholly  confined  to  the  ipsa 
verba  of  Epicurus,  for  they  show  more  interest  in 
rhetorical  precepts  than  was  displayed  by  the  founder 
of  the  school  3  they  are  more  sympathetic  toward 
the  average  man's  religion,  and  not  a  little  concerned 
about  the  affairs  of  state.  All  this  indicates  a  healthy 
reaction  that  more  than  one  philosopher  underwent 
in  coming  in  contact  with  Roman  men  of  the  world, 
but  it  also  doubtless  reflects  the  tendencies  of  the 
Syrian  branch  of  the  school  from  which  he  sprang; 
for  the  Syrian  group  had  had  to  cast  off  some  of 
its  traditional  fanaticism  and  acquire  a  few  social 
graces  and  a  modicum  of  worldly  wisdom  in  its  long 
contact  with  the  magnificent  Seleucid  court. 

Philodemus  was  himself  a  native  of  Gadara,  that 
unfortunate  Macedonian  colony  just  east  of  the  Sea 
of  Galilee,  which  was  subjected  to  Jewish  rule  in 
the  early  youth  of  ooir  philosopher.  He  studied 
with  Zeno  of  Sidon,  to  whom  Cicero  also  listened 
in  78,  a  masterful  teacher  whose  followers  and 
pupils,  Demetrius,  Phaedrus,  Patro,  probably  also 
Siro,  and  of  course  Philodemus,  captured  a  large 
part  of  the  most  influential  Romans  for  the  sect.^ 

•  Itdiam  iotam  occufaverunt,    Cic.  Tusc,  IV.  7, 


A   STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY  51 

How  Philodemus  taught  his  rich  Roman  patrons 
and  pupils  to  value  not  only  his  creed  but  the  whole 
line  of  masters  from  Epicurus  we  may  learn  from 
the  Herculanean  villa  where  his  own  library  was 
found,  for  it  contained  a  veritable  museum  of  Epi- 
curean worthies  down  to  Zeno,  perhaps  not  excluding 
the  teacher  himself,  if  we  could  but  identify  his  por- 
trait.* 

The  list  of  influential  Romans  who  joined  the 
sect  during  this  period  is  remarkable,  though  of 
course  we  have  in  our  incidental  references  but  a 
small  part  of  the  whole  number.  Here  belonged 
Caesar,  his  father-in-law  Piso,  who  was  Philodemus' 
patron,  Manlius  Torquatus,  the  consulars  Hirtius, 
Pansa,  and  Dolabella,  Cassius  the  liberator,  Tre- 
batius  the  jurist,  Atticus,  Cicero's  life-long  friend, 
Cicero's  amusing  correspondents  Paetus  and  Gallus, 
and  many  others.  To  some  of  these  the  attraction  S 
lay  perhaps  in  the  philosophy  of  ease  which  excused 
them  from  dangerous  political  labors  for  the  en- 
joyment of  their  villas  on  the  Bay  of  Naples.  But  to  t 
most  Romans  the  greatest  attraction  of  the  doctrine  / 
lay  in  its  presentation  of  a  tangible  explanation  of  ) 
the  universe,  weary  as  they  were  of  a  childish  faith  \ 
and  too  practical-minded  to  have  patience  with  meta-  1 
physical  theories  now  long  questioned  and  incompre-  \ 

8  See  Class,  PhiL  1 920,  p.  1 1 3, 


I 


INT 


52  VERGIL 

hensible  except  through  a  tedious  application  of 
dubious  logic. 

VergiPs  companions  in  the  Cecropus  hortulusy 
destined  to  be  his  life-long  friends,  were,  according 
to  Probus,  Quintilius  Varus,  the  famous  critic,  Varius 
Ruf us,  the  writer  of  epics  and  tragedies,  and  Plotius 
Tucca.  Of  his  early  friendship  with  Varius  he  has 
left  a  remembrance  in  Catalepon  I  and  VII,  with 
Varus  in  Eclogue  VI.  Horace  combined  all  these 
names  more  than  once  in  his  verses/  That  the  four 
friends  continued  in  intimate  relationship  with 
Philodemus,  appears  from  fragments  of  the  rolls.*^ 
l^^neral  question  of  Phjlodemus'  influence 
upon  Varius  and  Vergil,  Varus  and  Horace,  the 
critics  and  poets  who  shaped  the  ideals  of  the 
Augustan  literature,  it  is  not  yet  time  to  speak.  It 
will  be  difiicult  ever  to  decide  how  far  these  men 
drew  their  materials  from  the  memories  of  their 
lecture-rooms  J  whether  for  instance  Varius'  de  monk 
depended  upon  his  teacher's  Trepl  OavaTov^  as  has/ 
been  suggested,  or  to  what  extent  Horace  used  the  '^ 
irepX  ^pyfjq    and  the  irepl  KaKiSiv  when  he  wrote  his 

*  Cf.  Hor.  Sat.  I.  5.55;  i.  10.  44-45  and  81 ;  Carm.  1.  24. 

'  Rhein,  Mus.y  1890,  p.  172.     The  names  of  Quintilius  and 

Varius  occur  twice;  the  rest  are  too  fragmentary  to  be  certain, 

but  the  space  calls  for  names  of  the  length  of  T1\w\ti€    and 

,Oh\j.pyi\i€       and    the    constant   companionship   of   these    four 

men  makes  the  restoration  very  probable. 


A   STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY  53 

first  two  epistles,  or  the  ir^pl  KoXaKeias  when  he 
instructed  his  young  friend  Lollius  how  to  con- 
duct himself  at  court,  or  whether  it  was  this 
teacher  who  first  called  attention  to  Bion,  Neoptole- 
mus,  and  Menippus;  nor  does  it  matter  greatly, 
since  the  value  of  these  works  lay  rather  in  the  art 
of  expression  and  timeliness  of  their  doctrine  than  in 
originality  of  view. 

In  the  theory  of  poetic  art  there  is  in  many  respects 
a  marked  difference  between  the  classical  ideals  of 
the  Roman  group  and  the  rather  luxurious  verses  of 
Philodemus,  but  he  too  recognized  the  value  of 
restraint  and  simplicity,  as  some  of  his  epigrams 
show.  Furthermore  his  theories  of  literary  art  are 
frequently  in  accord  with  Horace's  Ars  Poetica  on 
the  very  points  of  chaste  diction  and  precise  expres- 
sion which  this  Augustan  group  emphasized.  It 
would  not  surprise  his  contemporaries  if  Horace  re- 
stated maxims  of  Philodemus  when  writing  an  essay 
to  the  son  and  grandsons  of  Philodemus'  patron. 
However,  after  all  is  said,  Vergil  had  questioned 
some  of  the  Alexandrian  ideals  of  art  before  he  came 
under  the  influence  of  Philodemus,  and  the  seventh 
Catalefton  gives  a  hint  that  Varius  thought  as  Ver- 
gil. It  is  not  unlikely  that  Quintilius  Varus,  VergiPs 
elder  friend  and  fellow-Transpadane,  who  had 
grown  up  an  intimate  friend  of  Catullus  and  Calvus, 


V 


/ 

.mil* 


♦ 


54  VERGIL 

had  in  these  matters  a  stronger  influence  than  Philo- 
demus. 

There  are,  however,  certain  turns  of  sentiment  in 
Vergil  which  betray  a  non-Roman  flavor  to  one  who 
comes  to  Vergil  directly  from  a  reading  of  Lucretius, 
Catullus,  or  Cicero's  letters.    This  is  especially  true 
of  the  Oriental  proskynesis  found  in  the  very  first 
Eclogue  and  developed  into  complete  "  emperor 
worship  "  in  the  dedication  of  the  Georgics.    This 
language,  here  for  the  first  time  used  by  a  Roman 
poet,  is  not  to  be  explained  as  simple  gratitude  for 
great  favors.    It  is  not  even  satisfactorily  accounted 
for  by  supposing  that  the  young  poet  was  somewhat 
slavishly  following  some  Hellenistic  model.    Catul- 
lus had  paraphrased  the  Alexandrian  poets,  but  he 
ccaild  hardly  have  inserted  a  passage  of  this  import. 
Nor  was  it  mere  flattery,  for  Vergil  has  shown  in  his 
frank  praise  of  Cato,  Brutus,  and  Pompey  that  he 
does  not  merely  write  at  command.    No,  these  pas- 
sages in  Vergil  show  the  effects  of  the  long  years  of 
association   with   Greeks   and   Orientals   that   had 
steeped  his  mind  in  expressions  and  sentiments  which 
now  seemed  natural  to  him,  though  they  must  have 
surprised  many  a  reader  at  Rome.    His  teachers  at 
Naples  had  grown  up  in  Syria  and  had  furthermore 
carried  with  them  the  tradition  of  the  Syrian  branch 
of  the  school  that  had  learned  to  adapt  its  language 


A   STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY         55 

to  suit  the  whims  of  the  deified  Seleucid  monarchs. 
As  Epicureans  they  also  employed  sacred  names  with 
little  reverence.  Was  not  Antiochus  Epiphanes  him- 
self a  "  god,''  while  as  a  member  of  the  sect  he  be- 
littled divinity? 

Naples,  too,  was  a  Greek  city  always  filled  with 
Oriental  trading  folk,  and  these  carried  with  them 
the  language  of  subject  races.  It  is  at  Pompeii  that  - 
the  earliest  inscriptions  on  Italian  soil  have  been 
found  which  recognize  the  imperial  cult,  and  it  is 
at  Cumae  that  the  best  instance  of  a  cult  calendar  has 
come  to  light.  It  is  a  note,  one  of  the  very  few  in 
the  great  poet's  work,  that  grates  upon  us,  but  when 
he  wrote  as  he  did  he  was  probably  not  aware  that 
his  years  of  residence  in  the  "  garden  "  had  indeed 
accustomed  his  ear  to  some  un-Roman  sounds.*  Oc- 
tavian  was  of  course  not  unaware  of  the  advantage 
that  accrued  to  the  ruler*  through  the  Oriental  theory 
of  absolutism,  and  furtively  accepted  all  such  ex- 
pressions. By  the  time  Vergil  wrote  the  Aeneid  the 
Roman  world  had  acquiesced,  but  then,  to  our  sur- 
pri^,  Vergil  ceases  to  accord  divine  attributes  to 
Augustus. 

Again,  I  would  suggest  that  it  was  at  Naples  that 

®  Julius  Caesar  began  as  early  as  45  B.C.  to  invite 
extraordinary  honors  for  political  purposes,  but  Roman  literature 
seems  not  to  have  taken  any  cognizance  of  them  at  that  time. 


vA""-^ 


icu* 


I 


•i^kTO 


t*^ 


^fd^*"^ 


I 


^y*^"^^ 


56  VERGIL 

Vergil  may  most  readily  have  come  upon  the  "  mes- 
sianic "  ideas  that  occur  in  the  fourth  Eclogue,  for 
despite  all  the  objections  that  have  been  raised 
against  using  that  word,  conceptions  are  found  there 
which  were  not  yet  naturalized  in  the  Occident. 
The  child  in  question  is  thought  of  as  a  Soter  whose 
deeds  the  poet  hopes  to  sing  (1.  54),  and  further- 
more lines  7  and  50  contain  unmistakably  the  Orien- 
tal idea  of  naturam  farturlre,  as  Suetonius  phrases 
it  {Aug.  94).  Quite  apart  from  the  likelihood  that 
the  Gadarene  may  have  gossiped  at  table  about  the 
messianic  hopes  of  the  Hebrews,  which  of  course  he 
knew,  it  is  not  conceivable  that  he  never  betrayed 
any  knowledge  of,  or  interest  in,  the  prophetic  ideas 
with  which  his  native  country  teemed.  Meleager, 
also  a  Gadarene,  preserved  memories  of  the  people 
of  his  birthplace  in  his  poems,  and  Caecilius  of 
Caleacte,  who  seems  to  have  been  in  Italy  at  about 
this  time,  was  not  beyond  quoting  Moses  in  his 
rhetorical  works/ 

Furthermore,  Naples  was  the  natural  resort  of 

iall  those  Greek  and  Oriental  rhetoricians  and 
philosophers,  historians,  poets,  actors,  and  artists  who 
drifted  Romeward  from  the  crumbling  courts  of 
Alexandria,  Antioch,  and  Pergamum.     There  they 

^  It  i?  generally  assumed  that  his  book  was  the  source  for 
thp-^^iidtanon^^m  Pscudo-Longinus, 

lU  \ 


A   STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY  57 

could  find  congenial  surroundings  while  discovering 
wealthy  patrons  in  the  numerous  villas  of  the  idle 
rich  near  by,  and  thither  they  withdrew  at  vacation 
time  if  necessity  called  them  to  Rome  for  more 
arduous  tasks.     Andronicus,  the  Syrian  Epicurean, 
brought  to  Rome  by  Sulla,  made  his  home  at  nearby 
Cumae^  Archias,  Cicero's  client,  also  from  Syria, 
spent  much  time  at  Naples,  and  the  poet  Agathocles 
lived  there  j   Parthenius  of  Nicaea,  to  whom  the 
early  Augustans  were  deeply  indebted,  taught  Ver- 
gil at  Naples.    Other  Orientals  like  Alexander,  who 
wrote  the  history  of  Syria  and  the  Jews,  and  Tima- 
genes,  historian  of  the  Diadochi,  do  not  happen  to 
be  reported  from  Naples,  but  we  may  safely  assume 
that  most  of  them  spent  whatever  leisure  time  they 

could  there. 

Puteoli  too  was  still  the  seaport  town  of  Rome  as 
of  all  Central  Italy,  and  the  Syrians  were  then  the 
carriers  of  the  Mediterranean  trade.'  That  is  one 
reason  why  Apollo's  oracles  at  Cumae  and  Hecate's 
necromatic  cave  at  Lake  Avernus  still  prospered. 
When  Vergil  explored  that  region,  as  the  details  of 
the  sixth  book  show  he  must  have  done,  he  had 
occasion  to  learn  more  than  mere  geographic  details. 

That  Vergil  had  Isaiah,  chapter  11,  before  his* 
eyes  when  he  wrote  the  fourth  Eclogue  is  of  course  | 

«  Frank,  An  Economic  History  of  Rome,  chap.  xiv. 


\^ 


-.i^k 


\ 


1 

i 


58  VERGIU 

out  of  the  questionj   there  is  not  a  single  close 
parallel  of  the  kind  that  Vergil  usually  permits  him- 
self to  borrow  from  his  sources;  we  cannot  even  be 
sure  that  he  had  seen  any  of  the  Sibylline  oracles, 
now  found  in  the  third  book  of  the  collection,  which 
contains  so  strange  a  syncretism  of  Mithraic,  Greek, 
and  Jewish  conceptions,  but  we  can  no  longer  doubt 
that  he  was  in  a  general  way  well  informed  and  quite 
thoroughly  permeated  with  such  mystical  and  apoca- 
lyptic sentiments  as  every  Gadarene  and  any  Greek 
•from  the  Orient  might  well  know.    It  speaks  well 
for  his  love  of  Rome  that  despite  these  influences  it 
was  he  who  produced  the  most  thoroughly  national- 
istic epic  ever  written. 

The  first  fruit  of  Vergil's  studies  in  evolutionary 
science  at  Naples  was  the  Aetna,  if  indeed  the  poem 
be  his.  The  problem  of  the  authorship  has  been 
patiently  studied,  and  the  arguments  for  authenticity 
concisely  summarized  by  Vessereau '  make  a  strong 
case.  The  evidence  is  briefly  this.  Servius  attrib- 
uted the  poem  to  Vergil  in  his  preface  and  again 
in  his  commentary  on  Aeneid,  III,  578-  Donatus 
also  seems  to  have  done  so,  though  some  of  our 

•  Vessereau,  Aetna,  xx  ff;  Rand,  Harvard  Studies,  XXX,  106, 
I  c  c  ff.  It  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  Seneca  attrib- 
uted the  Aetna  to  Vergil  in  ad  Lucilium  79;  5=  Th<:  word, 
"  Vergil's  complete  treatment"  can  hardly  refer  to  the  seven 
meager  lines  found  in  the  third  book  of  the  Aenetd. 


I 


A  STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY  59 

manuscripts  of  his  Vita  contain  the  Phrase  i^- 
ambigmr.    Again,  the  texts  of  the  ^./««  which  we 
hive  agree  also  in  this  ascription.    Internal  evidence 
prives  the  poem  to  be  a  work  of  the  penod  be  ween 
uTnd  44,  which  admirably  suits  VergiUan  claims 
fsdl  dependence  upon  Lucretius  gives  the  first 
date,  its  mention  of  the  "Medea"  of  the  artist  Timo- 
n^acius  as  being  overseas,  a  work  which  was  brought 
To  Rome  between  46  and  44,  gives  the  second. 
Finally,  the  Aetna  is  by  a  student  of  Epicurean  ph^- 
Lophy  largely  influenced  by  Lucretius.    I    would 
be  difficult  to  make  a  stronger  case  short  of  a  con 
temporaneous  attribution.    Has  not  Vergil  him  j^f 
referred  to  the  Aetna  in  the  preface  of  his  C.m 
where  he  thanks  the  Muses  for  their  aid  in  an  ab 
struse  poem  (1.  93)  • 

Quare  quae  cantus  meditanti   mittere  caecos-" 
Magna  mihi  cupido  tribuistis  praem.a  d.vae. 

What  other  poem  could  he  have  had  in  mind?    The 

designation  does  not  fit  the  ^^^^'^'^^'f.^Z^ 
r^Jr^  besides  the  Aetna  that  could  be  m  question, 
poem  besiaes  xnc  tptna''^  into  account 

It  is  best,  therefore,  to  take  the  ^^/«« 

f     J   «<•   limine   the  wford   caecus  with 
po,tofth=J<""'?"'^"."  ""„>„*,  of   .  oaMi   theme, 


li 


i. 


60  VERGIL 

in  studying  VergiPs  life,  even  though  we  reserve  a 
place  in  our  memories  for  that  stray  phrase  de  qua 
ambigitur. 

The  poet  after  an  invocation  to  Apollo  justifies 

himself  for  rejecting  the  favorite  themes  of  myth 

and  fiction:  the  mysteries  of  nature  are  more  worthy 

of  occupying  the  efforts  of  the  mind.    He  has  chosen 

one  out  of  very  many  that  needs  explanation.    The 

true  cause  of  volcanic  eruption,  he  says,  is  that  air 

is  driven  into  the  pores  of  the  earth,  and  when  this 

comes  into  contact  with  lava  and  flint  which  contain 

atoms  of  fire,  it  creates  the  explosions  that  cause  such 

destruction.    After  a  second  invitation  to  the  reader 

to  appreciate  the  worth  of  such  a  theme  he  tells  the 

story  of  two  brothers  of  Catania  who,  when  other 

refugees    from    Aetna's    explosion    rescued    their 

worldly   goods,   risked   their   lives   to   save   their 

parents. 

The  poem  is  not  a  happy  experiment.  There  is 
no  lack  of  enthusiasm  for  the  subject,  despite  the 
fact  that  the  science  of  that  day  was  wholly  inade- 
quate to  the  theme.  But  Vergil  could  hardly  realize 
this,  since  both  Stoics  and  Epicureans  had  adopted 
the  theory  of  the  exploding  winds.  The  real  trouble 
with  the  theme  is  its  hopelessly  prosaic  ugliness. 
Lucretius,  by  his  imaginative  power,  had  apparently 
deceived  him  into  thinking  that  any  fragment  of 


A   STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY  61 

science  might  be  treated  poetically.    In  his  master 
the  "  flaring  atom  streams  "  had  attained  the  sub-  j 
limity  of  a  Platonic  vision,  and  the  very  majestic! 
sadness  of  his  materialism  carried  the  young  poetj 
off  his  feet.    But  the  mechanism  of  Aetna  remainedS 
merely  a  puzzle  with  little  to  inspire  awe,  and  thejN 
theme  contained  inherently  no  deep  meaning  for  hu/ 
manity  —  which,  after  all,  the  scientific  probleih 
must  possess  to  lend  itself  to  poetic  treatment.    Th^ 
poet  indeed  realized  all  this  before  he  had  finished.k 
He  sought,  with  inadequate  resources,  to  stir  an  emo- 
tion of  awe  in  describing  the  eruption,  to  argue  the 
reader  into  his  own  enthusiasm  for  a  scientific  sub- 
ject, to  prove  the  humanistic  worth  of  his  problem 
by  asserting  its  anti-religious  value,  and  finally,  in  a 
Turneresque  obtrusion  of  human  beings,  to  tell  the 
story  of  the  Catanian  brothers.     But  though  the 
attempt  does  honor  to  his  aesthetic  judgment  the 
theme  was  incorrigible.     Perhaps  the  recent  erup- 
tions of  Aetna  — they  are  reported  for  the  years 
50  and  46  B.  c.  —  had  given  the  theme  a  greater  in- 
terest than  it  deserved.    We  may  imagine  how  refu- 
gees from  Catania  had  flocked  to  Naples  and  told 
the  tale  of  their  suffering. 

There  is  another  element  in  the  poem  that  is  as 
significant  as  it  is  prosaic,  a  spirit  of  carping  at 
poetic  custom  which  reminds  the  reader  of  Philo- 


i'  1 1 


I 


62  VERGIL 

demus'  lectures.    Philodemus,  whether  speaking  of  ( 
philosophy  or  music  or  poetry,  always  begins  in  the/ 
negative.     He  is  not  happy  until  he  has  soundlyC 
trounced    his    predecessors    and    opponents.      The/ 
author  of  the  Aetna  has  learned  all  too  well  thi/ 
scholastic  method,  and  his  acerbity  usually  turns  the 
reader  away   before   he   has   reached   the   central 
theme.     There  is  of  course  just  a  little  of  this 
tone  left  in  the  Georgics  —  Lucretius  also  has  a 
touch  of  it  —  but  the  Aeneid  has  freed  itself  com- 
pletely. 

The  compensation  to  the  reader  lies  not  so  much 
in  episodical  myths,  descriptions,  and  the  story  at 
the  end,  apologetically  inserted  on  Lucretius'  theory 
of  sweetened  medicine,  as  rather  in  the  poet's  con- 
tagious enthusiasm  for  his  science,  the  thrill  of  dis- 
covery and  the  sense  of  wonder  (1.  251) : 

Divina  est  animi  ac  jucunda  voluptas! 
Men  have  wasted  hours  enough  on  trivialities  (258) : 

Torquemur  miseri  in  parvis,  terimurque  labore. 
A  worthier  occupation  is  science  (274): 

Implendus  sibi  qui'sque  bonis  est  artibus:  illae 
Sunt  animi  f  ruges,  haec  rerum  est  optima  merces. 

And  science  must  be  worthy  of  man's  divine  majesty 
(224) : 


,. 


A   STUDENT   OF    PHILOSOPHY  63 

Non  ocuh's  solum  pecudum  miranda  tueri 

More  nee  effusis  in  humum  grave  pascere  corpus; 

Nosse  fidem  rerum  dubiasque  exquirere  causas, 

Ingenium  sacrare  caputque  attollere  caelo, 

Scire  quot  et  quae  sint  magno  fatalia  mundo 

Principia. 

This  may  be  prose,  but  it  has  not  a  little  of  the 
magnificence  of  the  Lucretian  logic.  The  man  who 
wrote  this  was  at  least  a  spiritual  kinsman  of  Vergil. 


I 

■  I 


■*N- 


- 


VI 
EPIGRAM    AND    EPIC 

The  years  of  Vergil's  sojourn  in  Naples  were  per- 
haps the  most  eventful  in  Rome's  long  history,  and 
we  may  be  sure  that  nothing  but  a  frail  constitution 
could  have  saved  a  man  of  his  age  for  study  through 
those  years.     After  the  battle  of  Pharsalia  in  48, 
Caesar,  aside  from  the  lotus-months  in  Egypt,  paci- 
fied the  Eastern  provinces,  then  in  46  subdued  the 
senatorial  remnants  in  Africa,  driving  Cato  to  his 
death,  and  in  September  of  that  year  celebrated  his 
fourfold  triumph  with  a  magnificence  hitherto  un- 
dreamed.   All  Italy  went  to  see  the  spectacle,  and 
doubtless  Vergil  too  5  for  here  it  was,  if  we  mistake 
not,  that  he  first  resolved  to  write  an  epic  of  Rome. 
The  year  45  saw  the  defeat  of  the  Pompeian  rem- 
nants in  Spain,  and  the  first  preparations  for  the 
great  Parthian  expedition  which,  as  all  knew,  was  to 
inaugurate  the  new  Monarchy.    Then  came  the  sud- 
den blow  that  struck  Caesar  down,  the  civil  war  that 
elevated  Antony  and  Octavian  and  brought  Cicero 
to  his  death,  and  finally  the  victory  at  Philippi  which 
ended  all  hope  of  a  republic.    Through  all  this  tur- 


U 


EPIGRAM   AND   EPIC  65 

moil  the  philosophic  group  of  the  "  Garden  "  con- 
tinued its  pursuit  of  science,  commenting,  as  we  shall 
see,  upon  passing  events. 

The  Aetna  —  which  seems  to  date  from  about 
47-6  —  reveals  the  young  philosopher,  if  it  is  Ver- 
gil, in  a  serious  mood  of  single-minded  devotion  to 
his  new  pursuit.  But  as  may  be  inferred  from  the 
fifth  Catalepton  he  was  not  sure  of  not  backsliding. 
To  the  influence  of  Catullus,  plainly  visible  all 
through  these  brief  poems,  there  was  added  the  ex- 
ample of  Philodemus  who- wrote  epigrams  from  time 
to  time.  Several  of  the  Catalepton  may  belong  to 
this  period.  The  very  first,^  addressed  to  Vergil's 
lifelong  friend  Plotius  Tucca,  is  an  amusing  trifle  in 
the  very  vein  of  Philodemus.  The  fourth,  like  the 
first  in  elegiacs,  is  a  gracious  tribute  to  a  departing 
friend,  Musa,  perhaps  his  fellow-townsman  Octavius 
Musa.^  It  closes  with  a  generous  expression  of  un- 
questioning friendship  that  asks  for  no  return: 

Quare  illud  satis  est  si  te  permittis  amari 
Nam  contra  ut  sit  amor  mutuus,  unde  mihi? 

^  Dequa  saepe  tibi,  venit?     sed,  Tucca,  videre 
Non  licet.     Occulitur  limine  clausa  viri. 

Dequa  saepe  tibi,  non  venit  adhuc  mihi;  namque 
Si  occulitur,  longe  est  tangere  quod  nequeas. 

Venerit,   audivi.     Sed   iam   mihi   nuntius   iste 
Quid  prodest?    illi  dicito  cui  rediit. 

^  See  Horace,  Sat.  I.  10,  82;  Servius  on  EcL  IX.  7;  Berne 
Scholia  on  EcL  VIII.  6. 


01 


i  w 


} 


'II; 


I 


El  |i 


66  VERGIL 

That  IS  the  trait  surely  that  accounts  for  Horace's 
outburst  of  admiration 

Animae  quales  neque  candidiores 
Terra  tulit. 

The  seventh  is  an  epigram  mildly  twitting  Varius  ' 
for  his  insistence  upon  pure  diction.    The  crusade  | 
for  purity  of  speech  had  been  given  a  new  impetus/ 
a  decade  before  by  the  Atticists,  and  we  may  herej 
infer  that  Varius,  the  quondam  friend  of  CatuUusJ 
was  considered  the  guardian  of  that  tradition.    Ver- 
gil, despite  his  devotion  to  neat  technique,  may  have 
had  his  misgivings  about  rules  that  in  the  end  en- 
danger the  freedom  of  the  poet.     His  early  work 
ranged  very  widely  in  its  experiments  in  style,  and 
Horace's  Ars  Poetlca  written  many  years  later  shows 
that  Vergil  had  to  the  very  end  been  criticized  by 
the  extremists  for  taking  liberties  with  the  language. 
The  epigram  begins  as  though  it  were  an  erotic  poem 
in  the  style  of  Philodemus.    Then,  having  used  the 
Greek  word  fothosy  he  checks  himself  as  though 
dreading  a  frown  from  Varius,  and  substitutes  the 
Latin  word  fuer. 

\ 

Scilicet  hoc  sine  fraude,  Van  dulcissime,  dicam: 
"  Dispeream,  nisi  me  perdidit  iste  pothos." 

Sin  autem  praecepta  vetant  me  dicere,  sane 
Non  dicam,  sed:  "me  perdidit  iste  puer.'* 


EPIGRAM    AND    EPIC  67 

For  the  comprehension  of  the  personal  allusions 
in  the  sixth  and  twelfth  epigrams,  we  have  as  yet 
discovered  no  clue,  and  as  they  are  trifles  of  no 
poetic  value  we  may  disregard  them. 

The  fourteenth  is,  however,  of  very  great  interest. 
It  purports  to  be  a  vow  spoken  before  Venus'  shrine 
at  Sorrento  pledging  gifts  of  devotion  in  return  for 
aid  in  composing  the  story  of  Trojan  Aeneas. 

Si  mihi  susceptum  fuerit  decurrere  munus, 

O  Paphon,  o  sedes  quae  coh's  Idalias, 
Troius  Aeneas  Romana  per  oppida  digno 

lam  tandem  ut  tecum  carmine  vectus  eat: 
Non  ego  ture  modo  aut  picta  tua  templa  tabella 

Ornabo  et  puris  serta  feram  manibus  — 
Corniger  hos  aries  humilis  et  maxima  taurus 

Victima  sacrato  sparget  honore  focos 
Marmoreusque  tibi  aut  mi  lie  coloribus  ales 

In  morem  picta  stabit  Amor  pharetra. 
Adsis  o  Cytherea:  tuos  te  Caesar  Olympo 

Et  Surrentini  litoris  ara  vocat. 

The  poem  has  hitherto  been  assigned  to  a  period 
twenty  years  later.  But  surely  this  youthful  ferment 
of  hope  and  anxiety  does  not  represent  the  com- 
posure of  a  man  who  has  already  published  the 
Georgics.  The  eager  offering  of  flowers  and  a 
many-hued  statue  of  Cupid  reminds  one  rather  of 
the  youth  who  in  the  Ciris  begged  for  inspiration 
with  hands  full  of  lilies  and  hyacinths. 


^   I 


68  VERGIL 

However,  we  are  not  entirely  left  to  conjecture, 
'here  is  indubitable  evidence  that  Vergil  began  an 
epic  at  this  time,  some  fifteen  years  before  he  pub- 
lished the  Georgics,  It  seems  clear  also  that  the 
epic  was  an  Aeneidy  with  Julius  Caesar  in  the  back- 
ground, and  that  parts  of  the  early  epic  were  finally 
merged  into  the  great  work  of  his  maturity.  The 
question  is  of  such  importance  to  the  study  of  Ver- 
giPs  developing  art  that  we  may  be  justified  in  go- 
ing fully  into  the  evidence.^  As  it  happens  we  are 
fortunate  in  having  several  references  to  this  early 
effort.  The  ninth  Cataleftotiy  written  in  42,  men- 
tions the  poet's  ambition  to  write  a  national  poem 
worthy  of  a  place  among  the  great  classics  of  Greece 
(1.  62): 

Si  patrio  Graios  carmine  adire  sales. 
The  sixth  Eclogue  begins  with  an  allusion  to  it: 

Prima  Syracusio  dignata  est  ludere  versu 
Nostra,  nee  erubuit  silvas  habitare  Thalia. 
Cum  canerem  reges  et  proelia,  Cynthius  aurem 
Vellit  et  admonuit,  pastorem  Tityre  pinguis 
Pascere  oportet  oves,  deductum  dicere  carmen. 

This  may  be  paraphrased:  "My  first  song  —  the 
Culex  —  was  a  pastoral  strain.     When  later  I  es- 

^  Cf.  Classical  Quarterly y  1920,  156. 


EPIGRAM    AND    EPIC  69 

sayed  to  sing  of  kings  and  battles,  Phoebus  warned 
me  to  return  to  my  shepherd  song."  On  this  pas- 
sage Servius  has  the  comment:  significat  aut  Aenei- 
dem  aut  gesta  regum  Albanorum.  Donatus  finally  in 
his  Vita  says  explicitly:  mox  cum  res  Romanas  in- 
choasset,  offensus  materia,  ad  Bucolica  transit.  The 
poem,  therefore,  was  on  the  stocks  before  the 
Bucolics.  We  may  surmise  that  the  death  of  Caesar, 
whose  deeds  seem  to  have  brought  the  idea  of  such 
a  poem  to  VergiPs  mind,  caused  him  to  lay  the  work 
aside. 

Returning  to  the  fourteenth  Cataleptoriy  we  find 
what  seems  to  be  a  definite  key  to  the  date  and  cir- 
cumstances of  its  writing.    The  closing  lines  are: 

Adsis,  o  Cytherea:  tuos  te  Caesar  Olympo 
Et  Surrentini  li ton's  ara  vocat. 

It  was  on  September  26  in  46  b.  c,  that  Julius 
Caesar  so  strikingly  called  attention  to  his  claims 
of  descent  from  Venus  and  Aeneas  by  dedicating 
a  temple  to  Venus  Genetrix,  the  mother  of  the 
Julian  gens.  It  was  on  that  day  that  Caesar  "  called 
Venus  from  heaven  "  to  dwell  in  her  new  temple.* 

*  Cassius  Dio,  43,  22;  Appian,  II.  102.  There  is  independ- 
ent proof  that  Catalefton  XIV  is  earlier  than  the  Georgics, 
In  Georgics  II,  146,  Vergil  repeats  the  phrase  maxi?na  taurus 
victima,  but  the  phrase  must  have  had  its  origin  in  the  Cata- 
lepofiy  since  here  maxima  balances  humilis.  In  the  Georgics 
the  phrase  is  merely  a  verbal  reminiscence,  for  there  is  nothing 


i 


!! 


70  VERGIL 

yfsLS  not  this  the  act  that  prompted  the  happy  idea 
of  writing  the  epic  of  Aeneas?  Vergil  was  then 
living  at  Naples,  and  we  can  picture  the  poet  fevered 
with  the  new  impulse,  sailing  away  from  his  lectures 
across  the  fair  bay  for  a  day's  brooding.  Could  one 
find  a  more  fitting  place  than  Venus's  shrine  at  Sor- 
rento for  the  invocation  of  the  Aeneid? 

How  far  this  first  attempt  proceeded  we  shall 
probably  not  know.  VergiPs  own  words  would  im- 
ply that  his  early  effort  centered  about  Aeneas'  wars 
in  Italy;  the  sixth  Eclogue^ 

Cum  canerem  reges  et  proeh'a, 

is  rather  explicit  on  this  point.  Furthermore,  the  er- 
roneous reference  of  Calaeno's  omen  to  Anchises  in 
the  seventh  book  (1.  122)  would  indicate  that  this 
part  at  least  was  written  before  the  harpy-scene  of 
the  third,  for  the  latter  is  so  extensive  that  the  poet 
could  hardly  have  forgotten  it  if  it  had  already  been 
written. 

It  is,  however,  in  reading  the  first  and  fifth  books 
that  I  think  we  may  profit  most  by  keeping  in  mind 
the  fact  that  the  poet  had  begun  the  Aeneid  before 
Caesar's  death.    In  Book  I,  286  fF.,  occurs  a  passage 


y 


in  the  context  there  to  explain  maxima.  On  the  order  of  com- 
position of  the  Aeneid,  see  M.  M.  Crump,  The  Growth  of  the 
Aeneid, 


EPIGRAM   AND   EPIC  71 

which  Servius  referred  to  Julius  Caesar.    It  reads: 

Nascetur  pulchra  Troianus  origine  Caesar, 
Imperium  Oceano,  famam  qui  terminet  astris, 
lulius,  a  magno  demissum  nomen  lulo. 
Hunc  tu  olim  caelo,  spoliis  Orientis  onustum, 
Accipies  secura;  uocabitur  hie  quoque  uotis.** 

Very  few  modern  editors  have  dared  accept  Servius' 
judgment  here,  and  yet  if  we  may  think  of  these 
lines  as  adapted  from  (say)  an  original  dedication  to 
Julius  Caesar  written  about  45  b.  c,  the  difficulties 
of  the  commentators  will  vanish.  The  facts  that 
Vergil  seems  to  have  in  mind  are  these:  in  September 
4.6  B.  c,  Julius  Caesar,  after  returning  from 
Thapsus,  celebrated  his  four  great  triumphs  over 
Gaul,  Egypt,  Pontus,  and  Africa,  displaying  loads 
of  booty  such  as  had  never  before  been  seen  at  Rome. 
He  then  gave  an  extended  series  of  athletic  games, 
of  the  kind  described  in  Vergil's  fifth  book,  including 
a  restoration  of  the  ancient  ludus  Troiae.  When 
these  were  over  he  dedicated  the  temple  of  Venus 
Genetrix,  thereby  publicly  announcing  his  descent 
from  Venus,  and  presently  proclaimed  his  own  super- 
human rank  more  explicitly  by  placing  a  statue  of 
himself  among  the  gods  on  the  Capitoline  (Dio, 
XLIII,  14-22).     Are  not  the  phrases,  imperium 

^  The  following  lines  (291-6)  refer  to  the  succeeding  reign 
of  Augustus  as  the  poet  is  careful  to  indicate  in  the  words 
turn  fositis''bellis» 


i\ 


I 


ya  VERGIL 

Oceano  and  s-poliis  Onentts  onustum  a  direct  refer- 
ence to  this  triumph  which,  of  course,  Vergil  saw? 
And  did  not  these  dedications  inspire  the  prophecy 
uocahitur  hie  quoque  uotis?  Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is 
difficult  to  refuse  credence  to  Servius  in  this  case, 
for  Vergil  here  (I,  267-274  and  283)  accepts  Julius 
Caesar's  claim  of  descent  from  lulus,  whereas  in  the 
sixth  book,  in  speaking  of  the  descent  of  the  royal 
Roman  line,  he  derives  it,  as  was  regularly  done  in 
Augustus'  day,  from  Silvius  the  son  of  Aeneas  and 
Lavinia  (VI,  763  ff.).  We  must  notice  also  that  in 
the  Aeneid  as  in  the  Georgics  Augustus  is  regularly 
called  ^  Augustus  Caesar '  or  ^  Caesar,'  whereas  in  the 
only  other  references  to  Julius  in  the  Aeneid  the  poet 
explicitly  points  to  him  by  saying  *  Caesar  et  omnis 
luli  progenies'  (VI,  789). 

Servius,  therefore,  seems  to  be  correct  in  regarding 
Julius  as  the  subject  of  the  passage  in  the  first  book, 
and  it  follows  that  the  passage  contains  memories  of 
the  year  46  b.  c,  whether  or  not  the  lines  were,  as  I 
suggest,  first  written  soon  after  Caesar's  triumph. 

The  fifth  book  also,  despite  the  fact  that  its  be- 
ginning and  end  show  a  late  hand,  contains  much  that 
can  be  best  brought  into  connection  with  Vergil's 
earlier  years.  It  is,  for  instance,  easier  to  compre- 
hend the  poet's  references  to  Memmius,  Catiline, 
and  Cluentius  in  the  forties  than  twenty  years  later. 


EPIGRAM   AND   EPIC  73 

Vergil's  strange  comparison  of  Messalla  to  the 
suferbus  Eryx  in  Catalefton  IX,  written  in  42 
B.  c.,^  is  also  readily  explained  if  we  may  assume 
that  he  has  recently  studied  the  Eryx  myth  in  prep- 
aration for  the  contest  of  Book  V  (11.  392-420). 
The  poet's  enthusiasm  for  the  ludus  Troiae  is  well 
understood  as  a  description  of  what  he  saw  at 
Caesar's  re-introduction  of  the  spectacle  in  46.  At 
Caesar's  games  Octavian,  then  sixteen  years  of  age, 
must  have  led  one  of  the  troops: '  in  the  fifth  book 
Atys  the  ancestor  of  Octavian's  maternal  line  led 
one  column  by  the  side  of  lulus: 

Aher  Atys,  genus  unde  Atii  duxere  Latini  (1.  568). 

Then,  too,  marks  of  youth  pervade  the  substance! 
of  the  book.    The  questionable  witticisms  might  per-[ 
haps  be  attributed  to  an  attempt  to  relieve  the  strain,! 
but  there  is  an  unusual  amount  of  Homeric  imitation,  \ 
and  inartistic  allusion  to  contemporaries  which,  as  ^ 
in  the  youthful  Bucolics y  destroys  the  dramatic  illu- 
sion.    Thus,  Vergil  not  only  dwells  upon  the  an- 
cestry of  the  Memmii,  Sergii,  and  Cluentii,  but  in- 
sists upon  reminding  the  reader  of  Catiline's  con- 
spiracy in  the  Sergestus,  furens  animi  who  dashes 

*  See  Chapter  VIII. 

^  The  brief  account  of  Nicolaus  of  Damascus  (9)  mentions 
^that  Octavius  had  charge  of  the  Greek  plays  at  the  triumphal 
games. 


\ 


\ 


rf5 


74  VERGIL 

upon  the  rock  in  his  mad  eagerness  to  win,  and  ob- 
trudes etymology  in  the  phrase  segnem  Menoeten 
(1.  173).  One  is  tempted  to  suspect  that  the  whole 
narrative  of  the  boat-race  is  filled  with  pragmatic 
allusions.  If  the  characters  of  his  epic  must  be  con- 
nected with  well-known  Roman  families,  it  is  at 
least  interesting  that  the  connections  are  indicated  in 
the  fifth  book  and  not  in  the  passages  where  the 
names  first  meet  the  reader.  Does  it  not  appear 
that  the  body  of  the  book  was  composed  long  before 
the  rest,  and  then  left  at  the  poet's  death  not  quite 
furbished  to  the  fastidious  taste  of  a  later  day? 

Finally,  I  would  suggest  that  the  strange  and  still 
unexplained®  omen  of  Acestes'  burning  arrow  in 
11.  520  flF.  probably  refers  to  some  event  of  impor- 
tance to  Segesta  in  the  same  year,  46  b.  c.  We  are 
told  by  the  author  of  the  Bellum  Africanum  that 
Caesar  mustered  his  troops  for  the  African  campaign 
at  Lilybaeum  in  the  winter  of  47.  We  are  not  told 
that  while  there  he  ascended  the  mountain,  offered 
sacrifices  to  Venus  Erycina,  and  ordered  his  statue 
to  be  placed  in  her  temple,  or  that  he  gave  favors 
to  the  people  of  Segesta  who  had  the  care  of  that 
temple.  But  he  probably  did  something  of  that 
kind,  for  as  he  had  already  vowed  his  temple  to 

®  See  however  DeWitt,  The  Arrow  of  Acesles,  Am,  Jour, 
PhU.  1920,  369.. 


< 


EPIGRAM    AND    EPIC  75 

Venus  Genetrix  he  could  hardly  have  remained 
eight  days  at  Lilybaeum  so  near  the  shrine  of  Aeneas' 
Venus  without  some  act  of  filial  devotion.  If  Vergil 
wrote  any  part  of  the  fifth  book  in  or  soon  after  46 
this  would  seem  to  be  the  solution  of  the  obscure 
passage  in  question. 

It  is  of  importance  then  in  the  study  of  the  Aeneid 
to  keep  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  plot  was  probably 
shaped  and  many  episodes  blocked  out  while  Vergil 
was  young  and  Julius  Caesar  still  the  dominant! 
figure  in  Rome.  Many  scenes  besides  those  in  the 
fifth  book  may  find  a  new  meaning  in  this  suggestion,  f 
Does  it  not  explain  why  so  many  traits  in  Dido's 
character  irresistibly  suggest  Cleopatra,^  why  half  the 
lines  of  the  fourth  book  are  reminiscent  of  Caesar's 
dallying  in  Egypt  in  47?  Do  not  the  protracted 
battle  scenes  of  the  last  book  —  otherwise  so  un- 
Vergilian  —  remind  one  of  Caesar's  never-ending 
campaigns  against  foes  springing  up  in  all  quarters, 
and  of  the  fact  that  Vergil  had  himself  recently  had 
a  share  in  the  struggle?  The  young  Octavius,  also, 
whose  boyhood  is  so  sympathetically  sketched  by 
Nicolaus  (5-9) — a  leader  among  his  companions 
always,  but  ever  devoted  and  generous  —  seems  to 
peer  through  the  portrait  of  Ascanius.^°     Vergil's 

^  Nettleship,  Ancient  Lives  of  Virgil,  104;  Warde  Fowler, 
Religious  Exferience  of  the  Roman  Peofle,  p.  415. 

^°  See  Warde  Fowler,  The  Death  of  Turnus,  pp.  87-92,  on 
the  character  of  Ascanius. 


^1 


I   1 


I! 


V 


■{/' 


76  VERGIL 

memories  of  the  boy  at  school,  the  recipient  of  the 
Culexy  the  leader  of  the  Trojan  troop  at  Caesar's 
games,  the  lad  of  sixteen  sitting  for  a  day  in  the 
forum  as  fraefectus  urbiy  seem  very  recent  in  the 
pages  of  the  epic. 

It  would  be  futile  to  attempt  to  pick  out  definite 
lines  and  claim  that  these  were  parts  of  the  youthful 
poem.    Indeed  the  artistry  of  most  of  the  verses  dis- 
cussed is,  as  any  reader  will  notice,  more  on  the  plane 
of  the  later  work  than  of  the  CiriSy  written  about 
47-3  B.  c.    It  is  safe  to  say  that  Vergil  did  not  in 
his  youth  write  the  sonorous  lines  of  A  en.  I,  285-    • 
290,  just  as  they  now  stand.     But  as  we  may  learn\  j 
from  the  CiriSy  which  Vergil  attempted  to  suppress,    I 
no  poet  has  more  successfully  retouched  lines  written   r 
in  youth  and  fitted  them  into  mature  work  without 
leaving  a  trace  of  the  process. 

Critics  have  always  expressed  their  admiration  for  | 
the  comprehensive  scope  of  the  Aeneidy  its  depth  of  I 
learning,  its  finished  artistry,  and  its  wide  range  of  \ 
observation.    The  substantial  character  of  the  poem    | 
is  not  a  mystery  to  us  when  we  consider  how  long   j 
its  theme  lay  in  the  poet's  mind. 


y 


VII 
EPICUREAN   POLITICS 

Caesar  fell  on  the  Ides  of  March,  44.  The 
peaceful  philosophic  community  at  Herculaneum 
"  seeking  wisdom  in  daily  intercourse  "  must  have 
felt  the  shock  as  of  an  earthquake,  despite  Epicurean 
scorn  for  political  ambition.  Caesar  had  been 
friendly  to  the  school;  his  father-in-law,  Piso,  had 
been  Philodemus'  life-long  friend  and  patron,  and, 
if  we  may  believe  Cicero,  even  at  times  a  boon  com- 
panion. Several  af  Caesar's  nearest  friends  were 
Epicureans  of  the  Neapolitan  bay.  Their  future 
depended  wholly  upon  Caesar.  Dolabella  was 
Antony's  colleague  in  that  year's  consulship,  while 
Hirtius  and  Pansa  had  been  chosen  consuls  for  the 
following  year  by  Caesar.  To  add  to  the  shock,  the 
liberators  had  been  led  by  a  recent  convert  to  the 
school,  Cassius. 

The  community  as  a  whole  was  Caesarian,  a  fact 
explained  not  wholly  by  Piso's  relations  to  Philo- 
demus  and  the  friendly  attitude  of  so  many  fol- 
lowers of  Caesar,  but  also  by  the  consideration  that 
the  leading  spirits  were  Transpadanes:  Vergil,  Varius 

77 


f 


11 


I 


78  VERGIL 

and  Quintilius,  at  least.  But  at  Rome  the  political 
struggle  soon  turned  itself  into  a  contest  to  decide 
not  whether  Caesar's  regime  should  be  honored  and 
continued  in  the  family  —  Octavius  seemed  at  first 
too  young  to  be  a  decisive  factor  —  but  whether 
Antony  would  be  able  to  make  himself  Caesar's  suc- 
cessor. When  in  July  Brutus  and  Cassius  were  out- 
manoeuvered  by  Antony,  and  Cicero  fled  helplessly 
from  Rome,  it  was  Piso  who  stepped  into  the  breach, 
not  to  support  Brutus  and  Cassius,  but  to  check  the 
usurpation  of  Antony.  This  gave  Cicero  a  program. 
In  September  he  entered  the  lists  against  Antony; 
in  December  he  accepted  the  support  of  Octavian 
who  had  with  astonishing  daring  for  a  youth  of 
eighteen  collected  a  strong  army  of  Caesar's  vet- 
erans and  placed  himself  at  the  service  of  Cicero  and 
the  Senate  in  their  warfare  against  Antony.  Spring 
found  the  new  consuls,  Hirtius  and  Pansa,  both 
Caesarians,  with  the  aid  of  Octavian,  Caesar's  heir,, 
besieging  Antony  at  the  bidding  of  the  Senate  in 
the  defence  of  Decimus  Brutus,  one  of  Caesar's 
murderers!  Such  was  Cicero's  skill  in  generalship. 
Of  course  Caesarians  were  not  wholly  pleased  with 
this  turn  of  events.  Cicero's  success  would  mean  not 
only  the  elimination  of  Antony  —  to  which  they  did 
not  object — ^but  also  the  recall  of  Brutus  and  Cassius, 
and  the  consequent  elimination  of  themselves  from 


EPICUREAN   POLITICS  79 

political  influence.  Piso  accordingly  began  to  waver. 
While  assuring  the  Senate  of  his  continued  support 
in  their  efforts  to  render  Antony  harmless,  he  re- 
fused to  follow  Cicero's  leadership  in  attempting  the 
complete  restoration  of  Brutus'  party.  Cicero's 
Philippcs  dwell  with  no  little  concern  upon  this 
phase  of  the  question.  ^ 

We  would  expect  the  Garden  group,  friendly  to   V 
the  memory  of  Caesar,  to  adopt  the  same  point  of 
view  as  Piso  and  for  the  same  reasons.    They  could 
hardly  have  sympathized  with  the  murderers  of 
Caesar.    On  the  other  hand,  they  had  no  reason  for 
supporting  the  usurpations  of  Antony,  and  seem  to  / 
have  enjoyed  Cicero's  Philippics  in  so  far  as  these  / 
attacked  Antony.  Extreme  measures  were,  however, 
not  agreeable  to  Epicureans,  who  in  general  had  I 
nothing  but  condemnation  for  civil  war.    However, 
Octavian's  strong  stand  could  only  have  pleased 
them:    Caesar's    grand-nephew    and    heir    would 
naturally  be  to  them  a  sympathetic  figure. 

A  fragment  of  Philodemus,  recently  deciphered,^ 
reveals  the  teacher  adopting  in  his  lectures  the  very 
point  of  view  which  we  have  already  found  in  Piso. 
The  fragment  is  brief  and  mutilated,  but  so  much  is 
clear:  Philodemus  criticizes  the  party  of  Cicero  for 
carrying  the  attack  upon  Antony  to  such  extremes 

^  Hermes,  191 8,  p.  382. 


i 


II 


l|;l 


I 


80  VERGIL 

that  through  fear  of  the  liberators  a  reaction  in 
favor  of  Antony  might  set  in.  We  find  this 
position  reflected  even  in  Vergil.  He  never  speaks 
harshly  of  the  liberators,  to  be  sure;  in  fact  his  in- 
direct reference  to  Brutus  in  the  Aeneid  is  remark- 
ably sympathetic  for  an  Augustan  poet,  but  we  have 
two  epigrams  of  his  attacking  partizans  of  Antony 
ill  terms  that  remind  us  of  passages  in  Cicero's 
Philippics.  It  would  almost  appear  that  Vergil  now 
drew  his  themes  for  lampoons  from  Cicero's  un- 
forgettable phrases,"  as  Catullus  had  done  some 
fifteen  years  before.  How  thoroughly  Vergil  dis- 
liked Antony  may  be  seen  in  the  familiar  line  in 
the  Aeneid  which  Servius  recognized  as  an  allusion 
to  that  usurper  (Aen.Vl.  622): 

Fixit  leges  pretio  atque  refixlt. 

If  Servius  is  correct,  we  have  here  again  a  reminder 
of  those  stormy  years.  This,  too,  is  a  dagger  drawn 
from  Cicero's  armory.  Again  and  again  the  orator 
in  the  Philippics  charges  Antony  with  having  used 
Caesar's  seal  ring  for  lucrative  forgeries  in  state 
documents.  It  is  interesting  to  find  that  Vergil's  . 
school  friend,  Varius,  in  his  poem  on  Caesar's  death, 

^  Three  other  epigrams,  VI,  XII,  XIII,  have  been  assumed 
by  some  critics  to  be  direct  attacks  upon  Antony,  but  the  key  to 
them  has  been  lost  and  certainty  is  no  longer  attainable. 


'.t 


i 


i 


EPICUREAN    POLITICS 


81 


called  De  Morte^  first  put  Cicero's  charges  into 
effective  verse: 

Vendidit  hie  Latium  populis  agrosque  Quiritum 
Eripuit:  iixit  leges  pretio  atque  re  fixit. 

The  reference  here,  too,  must  have  been  to  Antony. 
The  circle  was  clearly  in  harmony  in  their  political 
views. 

The  two  creatures  of  Antony  attacked  by  Cicero 
and  Vergil  alike  are  Ventidius  and  Annius  Cimber. 
The  epigram  on  the  former  takes  the  form  of  a 
parody  of  Catullus'  "  Phasellus  ille,"  a  poem  which 
Vergil  had  good  reason  to  remember,  since  Catullus' 
yacht  had  been  towed  up  the  Mincio  past  Vergil's 
home  when  he  was  a  lad  of  about  thirteen.  Indeed 
we  hope  he  was  out  fishing  that  day  and  shared  his 
catch  with  the  home-returning  travelers.  Parodies 
are  usually  not  works  of  artistic  importance,  and  this 
for  all  its  epigrammatic  neatness  is  no  exception  to 
the  rule.  But  it  is  not  without  interest  to  catch  the 
poet  at  play  for  a  moment,  and  learn  his  opinion  on 
a  political  character  of  some  importance. 

^  Some  recent  critics  have  suggested  that  the  poem  may  have 
been  a  general  discussion  of  the  fear  of  death,  but  Varius  is 
constantly  referred  to  as  an  epic  poet  (Horace,  Sat.  I.  10,  43; 
Carm.  I.  6  and  Porphyrio  ad  loc).  His  poem  was  written  be- 
fore Vergil's  eighth  Eclogue  which  we  place  in  41  b.c. 
(Macrobius,  Sat,  VI.  2.  20)  and  probably  before  the  ninth 
(see  1.36). 


f 


«( 


/ 


82  VERGIL' 

Ventidius  had  had  a  checkered  career.     After 
captivity,     possibly     slavery     and     manumission, 
Caesar   had   found   him   keeping   a   line   of   post  "^ 
horses  and  pack  mules  for  hire  on  the  great  Aemilian 
way,  and  had  drafted  him  into  his  transport  service 
during  the  Gallic  War.     He  suddenly  became  an 
important  man,  and  of  course  Caesar  let  him,  as  he 
let  other  chiefs  of  departments,  profit  by  war  con- 
tracts. •  It  was  the  only  way  he  could  hold  men  of 
great  ability  on  very  small  official  salaries.    Vergil 
had  doubtless  heard  of  the  meteoric  rise  of  this  muUo 
even  when  he  was  at  school,  for  the  post-road  for 
Caesar's    great    trains    of    supplies    led    through 
Cremona.    After  the  war  Caesar  rewarded  Ventidius 
further  by  letting  him  stand  for  magistracies  and 
become  a  senator  —  which  of  course  shocked  the 
nobility.     Muleteers   in   the   Senate!      The   man 
changed  his  cognomen  to  be  sure,  called  himself 
Sabinus  on  the  election  posters,  but  Vergil  remem- 
bered what  name  he  bore  at  Cremona.    Caesar  finally 
designated  him  for  the  judge's  bench,  as  praetor,  and 
this  high  office  he  entered  in  43.    He  at  once  attached 
himself  to  Antony,  who  used  him  as  an  agent  to  buy 
the  service  of  Caesarian  veterans  for  hi^  army.     It 
was  this  that  stirred  Cicero's  ire,  and  Cicero  did 
not  hesitate  to  expose  the  man's  career.  Vergil's  lam- 
poon is  interesting  then  not  only  in  its  connections 


EPICUREAN   POLITICS  83 

with  Catullus  and  the  poet's  own  boyhood  memories, 
but  for  its  reminiscences  of  Cicero's  speeches  and  the 
revelation  of  his  own  sympathies  in  the  partizan 
struggle.  The  poem  of  Catullus  and  Vergil's  par- 
ody must  be  read  side  by  side  to  reveal  the  purport 
of  Vergil's  epigram. 

Phaselus  ille,  quern  videtis,  hospites, 

Ait  fuisse  navium  celerrimus, 

Neque  ullius  natantis  impetum  trabis 

Nequisse  praeterire,  sive  palmulis 

Opus  foret  volare  sive  linteo. 

Et  hoc  negat  minacis  Adriatici 

Negare  litus  insulasve  Cycladas 

Rhodumque  nobilem  horridamque  Thraciam 

Propontida  trucemve  Ponticum  sinum, 

Ubi  iste  post  phaselus  antea  f uit 

Comata  silva:  nam  Cytorio  in  iugo 

Loquente  saepe  sibilum  edidit  coma. 

Amastri  Pontica  et  Cytore  buxifer, 

Tibi  haec  fuisse  et  esse  cognitissima 

Ait  phaselus:  ultima  ex  origine 

Tuo  stetisse  dicit  in  cacumine, 

Tuo  imbuisse  palmulas  in  aequore, 

Et  inde  tot  per  inpotentia  freta 

Erum  tulisse,  laeva  sive  dextera 

Vocaret  aura,  sive  utrumque  luppiter 

Simul  secundus  incidisset  in  pedem; 

Neque  uUa  vota  litoralibus  deis 

Sibi  esse  facta,  cum  veniret  a  mari 

Novissimo  hunc  ad  usque  limpidum  lacum. 

Sed  haec  prius  f uere ;  nunc  recondita 

Senet  quiete  seque  dedicat  tibi, 

Gemelle  Castor  et  gemelle  Castoris. 


! 


1 


84  VERGIL 

Vergil's  parody,*  which  substitutes  the  mule-team 
plodding  through   the  Gallic   mire   for   Catullus'  \/ 
graceful  yacht  speeding  home  from  Asia,  follows 
the  original  phraseology  with  amusing  fidelity: 

Sabinus    ille,    quem    videtis,    hospites 
Ait  fuisse  mulio  celerrimus, 
Neque  ulh'us  volantis  impetum  cisi 
Nequisse  praeterire,  sive  Mantuam 
Opus  foret  volare  sive  Brixiam. 
Et  hoc  negat  Tryphonis  aemuli  domum 
Negare  nobilem  insulamve  Caeruh*, 
Ubi  iste  post  Sabinus,  ante  Quinctio 
Bidente  dicit  attodisse  forcipe 
Comata  colla,  ne  Cytorio  iugo 
Premente  dura  volnus  ederet  iuba. 
Cremona  f  rigida  et  lutosa  Gallia, 
Tibi  haec  fuisse  et  esse  cognitissima 
Ait  Sabinus:  ultima  ex  origine 
Tua  stetisse  (dicit)  in  voragine, 
Tua  in  palude  deposisse  sarcinas 
Et  inde  tot  per  orbitosa  milia 
lugum  tulisse,  laeva  sive  dextera 
Strigare  mula  sive  utrumque  coeperat 


Neque  ulla  vota  semitalibus  deis 
Sibi  esse  facta  praeter  hoc  novissimum, 
Paterna  lora  proximumque  pectinem. 
Scd  haec  prius  f  uere :  nunc  eburnea 
Sedetque  sede  seque  dedicat  tibi, 
Gemelle  Castor  et  gemelle  Castoris. 

*  See  Classical  PAilology,  1920,  p.  114. 


w 


EPICUREAN    POLITICS  85 

The  other  epigram  referred  to  (Caialepton  II) 
also  attacks  a  creature  of  Antony's,  Annius  Cimber, 
a  despised  rhetorician  who  had  been  helped  to  high 
political  office  by  Antony.  Again  Cicero's  Philippics 
(XI.  14)  serve  as  our  best  guide  for  the  background. 

Corinthiorum  amator  iste  verborum, 
Iste  iste  rhetor,  namque  quatenus  totus 
Thucydides,  Britannus,  Attice  febris! 
Tau  Gallicum  min  et  sphin  ut  male  illisit, 
Ita  omnia  ista  verba  miscuit  fratri. 

It  might  be  paraphrased:  "a  maniac  for  archaic 
words,  a  rhetor  indeed,  he  is  as  much  and  as  little 
a  Thucydides  as  he  is  a  British  prince,  the  bane  of 
Attic  style!  It  was  a  dose  of  archaic  words  and  Cel- 
tic brogue,  I  fancy,  that  he  concocted  for  his 
brother." 

There  seem  to  be  three  points  of  attack.  Cimber, 
to  judge  from  Cicero's  invective,  was  suspected  of 
having  risen  from  servile  parentage,  and  of  trying, 
as  freedmen  then  frequently  did,  to  pass  as  a  de- 
scendant of  some  unfortunate  barbarian  prince.  Since 
his  brogue  was  Celtic  {tau  Gallicum)  he  could 
readily  make  a  plausible  story  of  being  British. 
Vergil  seems  to  imply  that  the  brogue  as  well  as  the 
name  Cimber  had  been  assumed  to  hide  his  Asiatic 
parentage.  The  second  point  seems  to  be  that  Cim- 
ber, though  a  teacher  of  rhetoric,  was  so  ignorant  of 


86  VERGIL 

Greek,  that  while  proclaiming  himself  an  Atticist, 
he  used  non-Attic  forms  and  vaunted  Thucydides 
instead  of  Lysias  as  the  model  of  the  simple  style. 
Finally,  it  was  rumored,  and  Cicero  affects  to  be- 
lieve the  tale,  that  Cimber  was  not  without  guilt  in 
the  death  of  his  brother.  Vergil  is,  of  course,  not 
greatly  concerned  in  deriding  Atticism  itself:  to  this 
school  Vergil  must  have  felt  less  aversion  than 
to  Antony's  flowery  style  j  it  is  the  perversion  of 
the  doctrine  that  amuses  the  poet. 

Taken  in  conjunction  with  other  hints,  these  two 
poems  show  us  where  the  poet's  sympathies  lay  dur- 
ing those  years  of  terror.  There  may  well  have 
been  a  number  of  similar  epigrams  directed  at 
Antony  himself,  but  if  so  they  would  of  course  have 
been  destroyed  during  the  reign  of  the  triumvirate. 
Antony's  vindictiveness  knew  no  bounds,  as  Rome 
learned  when  Cicero  was  murdered. 


• 


Hi 


VIII 
LAST  DAYS  AT  THE   GARDEN 

Vergil's  dedication  of  the  Ciris  to  Valerius  Mes- 
salla  was,  as  the  poem  itself  reveals,  written  several 
years  after  the  main  body  of  the  poem.  The  most 
probable  date  is  43  b.  c,  when  the  young  nobleman, 
then  only  about  twenty-one,  went  with  Cicero's 
blessing^  to  join  Brutus  and  Cassius  in  their  fight 
for  the  Republic.  Messalla  had  then,  besides  mak- 
ing himself  an  adept  at  philosophy  —  at  Naples  per- 
haps, since  Vergil  knew  him  —  and  stealing  away 
student  hours  at  Athens  for  Greek  verse  writing, 
gained  no  little  renown  by  taking  a  lawsuit  against 
the  most  learned  lawyer  of  the  day,  Servius  Sul- 
picius.  Cicero's  letter  of  commendation,  which  we 
still  have,  is  unusually  laudatory. 

The  dedication  of  the  Ciris  reveals  Vergil  still 
eager  to  win  his  place  as  a  rival  of  Lucretius.  We 
may  paraphrase  it  thus: 


<( 


Having  tried  in  vain  for  the  favor  of  the  populace, 
I  am  now  in  the  *  Garden '  seeking  a  theme  w^orthy  of 
philosophy,  though  I  have  spent  many  years  to  other  pur- 
pose.    Now  I  have  dared  to  ascend  the  mountain  of  wis- 

*  Cicero,  Ad  Brutum,  I,  15. 
87 


**>*' 


u 


88 


VERGIL 


( 


f "  I 


dom  where  but  few  have  ventured.  Yet  I  must  complete 
these  verses  that  I  have  begun  so  that  the  Muses  may  cease 
to  entice  me  further.  Oh,  if  only  wisdom,  the  mistress 
of  the  four  sages  of  old,  would  lead  me  to  her  tower 
whence  I  might  from  afar  view  the  errors  of  men;  I 
should  not  then  honor  one  so  great  with  a  theme  so  trifling, 
but  I  should  weave  a  marvelous  fabric  like  Athena's 
pictured  robe  ...  a  great  poem  on  Nature,  and  into  its 
texture  I  should  weave  your  name.  But  for  that  my  powers 
are  still  too  frail.  I  can  only  offer  these  verses  on  which 
I  liave  spent  many  hours  of  my  early  school-days,  a  vow 
long  promised  and  now  fulfilled." 

It  is  apparent  that  the  student  still  throbs  with  a 
desire  to  become  a  poet  of  philosophy,  and  that  he 
IS  willing  to  appease  the  muses  of  lighter  song  only 
because  they  insist  on  returning.  But  there  is  another 
poem  addressed  to  Messalla  that  is  equally  full  of 
personal  interest. 

Messalla,  as  we  know  from  Plutarch's  Brutus, 
drawn  partly  from  the  young  man's  diary,  joined 
Cassius  in  Asia,  and  did  noteworthy  service  in  help- 
ing his  general  win  the  Eastern  provinces  from  the 
Euxine  to  Syria  for  the  Republican  cause.  Later 
at  Philippi  he  led  the  cavalry  charge  which  broke 
through  the  triumvirate  line  and  captured  Octavius' 
camp.  That  was  the  famous  first  battle  of  Philippi, 
prematurely  reported  in  Italy  as  a  decisive  victory 
for  the  Republican  cause.  Three  weeks  later  the 
forces  clashed  again  and  the  triumvirs  won  a  com- 


LAST   DAYS   AT   THE    GARDEN  89 

plete  victory.  Messalla,  who  had  been  chosen  com- 
mander by  the  defeated  remnant,  recognized  the 
hopelessness  of  his  position  and  surrendered  to  the 
victors. 

VergiPs  ninth  Catalepon  seems  to  have  been 
written  as  a  paean  in  honor  of  Messalla  on  receipt 
of  the  first  incomplete  report.  The  poem  does  not 
by  any  means  imply  that  Vergil  favored  Brutus  and 
Cassius  or  felt  any  ill-will  towards  Octavian.  Ver- 
giPs regard  for  Messalla  was  clearly  a  personal  mat- 
ter, and  of  such  a  nature  that  political  diflFerences 
played  no  part  in  it.  The  poet's  complete  silence  in 
the  poem  about  Brutus  and  Cassius  indicates  that  it 
is  not  to  any  extent  the  cause  which  interests  him. 
Nor  can  a  eulogy  of  a  young  republican  at  this  time 
be  considered  as  implying  any  ill-will  toward 
Octavian,  to  whom  Vergil  was  always  devoted.  At 
this  early  day  Antony  was  still  looked  upon  as  the 
dominating  person  in  the  triumvirate,  and  for  him 
Vergil  had  no  love  whatever.  He  may,  therefore, 
though  a  Caesarian  and  friendly  to  Octavian,  sing 
the  praises  of  a  personal  friend  who  is  fighting 
Antony's  triumvirate. 

The  ninth  CataleftoUy  like  most  eulogistic  verse 
thrown  off  at  high  speed,  has  few  good  lines  (in- 
deed it  was  probably  never  finished),  but  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly interesting  as  a  document  in  Vergil's  life. 


\ 


\ 


'i 


) 


V 


I 


90  VERGIL 

Since  it  has  generally  been  placed  about  fifteen  years   ^ 
too  late  and  therefore  misunderstood,  we  must  dwell 
at  length  on  some  of  its  significant  details.     The 
poem  can  be  briefly  summarized: 

"  A  conqueror  you  come,  the  great  glory  of  a  mighty 
triumph,  a  victor  on  land  and  sea  over  barbarian  tribes; 
and  yet  a  poet  too.  Some  of  your  verses  have  found  a 
place  in  my  pages,  pastoral  songs  in  which  two  shepherds 
lying  under  the  spreading  oak  sing  in  honor  of  your  heroine 
to  whom  the  divinities  bring  gifts.  The  heroine  of  your 
song  shall  be  more  famous  than  the  themes  of  Greek 
song,  yes  even  than  the  Roman  Lucrece  for  whose  honor 
your  sires  drove  the  tyrants  out  of  Rome. 

"  Great  are  the  honors  that  Rome  has  bestowed  upon  the 
liberty-loving  (Publicolas)  Messallas  for  that  and  other 
deeds.  So  I  need  not  sing  of  your  recent  exploits:  how 
you  left  your  home,  your  son,  and  the  forum,  to  endure 
winter's  chill  and  summer's  heat  in  warfare  on  land  and 
sea.  And  now  you  are  off  to  Africa  and  Spain  and  beyond 
the  seas. 

"  Such  deeds  are  too  great  for  my  song.  I  shall  be 
satisfied  if  I  can  but  praise  your  verses.'* 

The  most  significant  passage  is  the  implied 
comparison  of  Valerius  Messalla  with  the  founder 
of  the  Valerian  family  who  had  aided  the  first  Brutus 
in  establishing  the  republic  as  he  now  was  aiding  the 
last  Brutus  in  restoring  it.  The  comparison  is  the 
more  startling  because  our  Messalla  later  explicitly 
rejected  all  connection  with  the  first  Valerius  and 


I 


LAST    DAYS    AT   THE    GARDEN         91 

seems  never  to  have  used  the  cognomen  Publicola. 
The  explanation  of  Vergil's  passage  is  obvious.''  The 
poet  hearing  of  Messalla's  remarkable  exploit  at 
Philippi  saw  at  once  that  his  association  with  Brutus 
would  remind  every  Roman  of  the  events  of  509 
B.  c,  and  that  the  populace  would  as  a  matter  of 
course  acclaim  the  young  hero  by  the  ancient  cog- 
nomen "Publicola."  Later,  after  his  defeat  and 
submission,  Messalla  had  of  course  to  suppress  every 
indication  that  might  connect  him  with  "  tyranni- 
cide "  stock  or  faction.  The  poem,  therefore,  must 
have  been  written  before  Messalla's  surrender  in 

42  B.  c. 

The  poet's  silences  and  hesitation  in  touching  upon 
this  subject  of  dvil  war  are  significant  of  his  mood. 
The  principals  of  the  triumph  receive  not  a  word: 
his  friend  is  the  "  glory  "  of  a  triumph  led  by  men 
whose  names  are  apparently  not  pleasant  memories. 
Nor  is  there  any  exultation  over  a  presumed  defeat 
of  "  tyrants  "  and  a  restoration  of  a  "  republic." 
The  exploit  of  Messalla  that  Vergil  especially 
stresses  is  the  defeat  of  "  barbarians,"  naturally  the 
subjection  of  the  Thracian  and  Pontic  tribes  and  of 
the  Oriental  provinces  earlier  in  the  year.  And  the 
assumption  is  made  (1.  Jiff.)  that  Messalla  has,  as 

^  The  argument  Is  given  in  full  in  Classical  PMlology,  1920, 
P-  36. 


I 


1    i 


I    I 
I    t 


BFl 


III 


92  VERGIL 

a  recognition  of  his  generalship,  been  chosen  to  com- 
plete the  war  in  Africa,  Spain,  and  Britain.  Most 
significant  of  all  is  Vergil's  blunt  confession  that  his 
mind  is  not  wholly  at  ease  concerning  the  theme 
(11.  9-12):  "I  am  indeed  strangely  at  a  loss  for 
words,  for  I  will  confess  that  what  has  impelled  me 
to  write  ought  rather  to  have  deterred  me."  Could 
he  have  been  more  explicit  in  explaining  that  Mes- 
salla's  exploits,  for  which  he  has  friendly  praise, 
were  performed  in  a  cause  of  which  his  heart  did 
not  approve?  And  does  not  this  explain  why  he 
gives  so  much  space  to  Messalla's  verses,  and  why 
he  so  quickly  passes  over  the  victory  of  Philippi  with 
an  assertion  of  his  incapacity  for  doing  it  justice? 

To  the  biographer,  however,  the  passage  praising 
Messalla's  Greek  pastorals  is  the  most  interesting  for 
It  reveals  clearly  how  Vergil  came  to  make  the 
momentous  decision  of  writing  pastorals.  Since 
Messalla's  verses  were  in  Greek  they  had,  of  course, 
been  written  two  years  before  this  while  he  was  a 
student  at  Athens.  Would  that  we  knew  this  hero 
Ine  upon  whom  he  represents  the  divinities  as  be- 
stowing gifts!  Propertius,  who  acknowledged  Mes- 
salla  as  his  patron  later  employed  this  same  motive 
of  celestial  adoration  in  honor  of  Cynthia  (II.  3,  25), 
but  surely  Messalla's  herots  was,  to  judge  from 
Vergil's  comparison,  a  person  of  far  higher  station 


\ 


u 


LAST    DAYS    AT   THE    GARDEN  93 

than  Cynthia.  Could  she  have  been  the  lady  he 
married  upon  his  return  from  Athens?  Such  a  treat- 
ment of  a  woman  of  social  station  would  be  in  line 
with  the  customs  of  the  "  new  poets,"  Catullus,  Cal- 
vus,  and  Ticidas,  rather  than  of  the  Augustans,  Gal- 
lus,  Propertius,  and  Tibullus.  Vergil  himself  used 
the  motive  in  the  second  Eclogue  (1.  46),  a  reminis- 
cence which,  doubtless  with  many  others  that  we  are 
unable  to  trace,  Messalla  must  have  recognized  as 

his  own. 
The  pastoral  which  Vergil  had  translated  from 
Messalla  is  quite  fully  described : 

Molliter  hie  viridi  fatulac  sub  tegmtne  quercus 

Moeris  pastores  et  Meliboeus  erant, 
Dulcia  jactantes  alterno  carmina  versu 

Qualia  Trinacriae  doctus  amat  iuvenis. 

That  is,  of  course,  the  very  beginning  of  his  own 
Eclogues.  When  he  published  them  he  placed  at  the 
very  beginning  the  well-known  line  that  recalled 
Messalla's  own  line: 

Tityre,  tu  fatulae  recubans  sub  tegmine  fagl. 

What  can  this  mean  but  a  graceful  reminder  to 
Messalla  that  it  was  he  who  had  inspired  the  new 
eflFort?  ' 

^  Roman   writers   frequently  observed   the  graceful   custom 
of  acknowledging  their  source  of  inspiration  by  weaving   in 


hi 


^H 


|f 


94  VERGIL 

We  may  conclude  then  that  VergiPs  use  of  that 
line  as  the  title  of  his  Eclogues  is  a  recognition  of 
Messalla's  influence.  Conversely  it  is  proof,  if 
proof  were  needed,  that  the  ninth  Catalefton  is  Ver- 
giPs. We  may  then  interpret  line  thirteen  of  the 
ninth  Catalepton: 

pauca  tua  in  nostras  venerunt  carmlna  chartas, 

as  a  statement  that  in  the  autumn  of  42,  Vergil  had 
already  written  some  of  his  Eclogues,  and  that  these 
early  ones  —  presumably  at  least  numbers  II,  III, 
and  VII  —  contain  suggestions  from  Messalla. 

There  was,  of  course,  no  triumph,  and  VergiPs 
eulogy  was  never  sent,  indeed  it  probably  never  was 
entirely  completed.*  Messalla  quickly  made  his 
peace  with  the  triumvirs,  and,  preferring  not  to 
return  to  Rome  in  disgrace,  cast  his  lot  with  Antony 
who  remained  in  the  East.  Vergil,  who  thorougly 
disliked  Antony,  must  then  have  felt  that  for  the 
present,  at  least,  a  barrier  had  been  raised  between 
him  and  Messalla.  Accordingly  the  Ciris  also  was 
abandoned  and  presently  pillaged  for  other  uses. 


fi 


I! 


a  recognizable  phrase  or  line  from  the  master  into  the  very 
first  sentence  of  a  new  work:  cf.  Arma  virumque  cano  — 
"AvSpa /lot  IwcTTC  (Lundstrom,  Eranos,  191 5,  p.  4)-  Shelley- 
responding  to  the  same  impulse  paraphrased  Bion's  opening 
lines  in  "  I  weep  for  Adonais  —  he  is  dead." 

*  It  ought,  therefore,  not  to  be  used  seriously  in  discussions 
of  VergiFs  technique. 


' 


LAST   DAYS   AT   THE   GARDEN         95 

The  news  of  Philippi  was  soon  followed  by  orders 
from  Octavian  —  to  be  thoroughly  accurate  we 
ought  of  course  to  call  him  Caesar  —  that  lands 
must  now,  according  to  past  pledges,  be  procured  in 
Italy  for  nearly  two  hundred  thousand  veterans. 
Every  one  knew  that  the  cities  that  had  favored  the 
liberators,  and  even  those  that  had  tried  to  preserve 
their  neutrality,  would  suffer.  Vergil  could,  of 
course,  guess  that  lands  in  the  Po  Valley  would  be 
in  particular  demand  because  of  their  fertility.  The 
first  note  of  fear  is  found  in  his  eighth  Catalepton: 

Villula,  quae  Sironis  eras,  et  pauper  agelle, 
Verum  illi  domino  tu  quoque  divitiae, 

Me  tibi  et  hos  una  mecum,  quos  semper  amavi, 
Si  quid  de  patria  tristius  audiero, 

Commendo  imprimisque  patrem:  tu  nunc  eris  illi 
Mantua  quod  fuerat  quodque  Cremona  prius. 

It  is  usually  assumed  from  this  passage  that  Siro 
had  recently  died,  probably,  therefore,  some  time  in 
42  B.  c,  and  that,  in  accordance  with  a  custom  fre- 
quently followed  by  Greek  philosophers  at  Rome, 
he  had  left  his  property  to  his  favorite  pupil.  The 
garden  school,  therefore,  seems  to  have  come  to  an 
end,  though  possibly  Philodemus  may  have  con- 
tinued it  for  the  few  remaining  years  of  his  life. 
Siro's  villa  apparently  proved  attractive  to  Vergil, 
for  he  made  Naples  his  permanent  home,  despite 


%\  J 


^f 


I 


i \\ 


w  I 


(((('' 


lii  > 


M\ 


f 


96  VERGIL 

the  gift  of  a  house  on  the  Esquiline  from  Maecenas. 
t  This,  however,  is  not  Vergil's  last  mention  of  Siro, 
,'  if  we  may  believe  Servius,  who  thinks  that 
"  Silenum  "  in  the  sixth  Eclogue  stands  for  "  Si- 
ronem,"  its  nietrical  equivalent.  If,  as  seems  wholly 
likely,  Servius  is  right,  the  sixth  Eclogue  is  a  fervid 
tribute  to  a  teacher  who  deserves  not  to  be  forgotten 
in  the  story  of  VergiPs  education.  The  poem  has 
been  so  strangely  misinterpreted  in  recent  years  that 
it  is  time  to  follow  out  Servius'  suggestion  and  see 
''hether  it  does  not  lead  to  some  conclusions.^ 
After  an  introduction  to  Varus  the  poem  tells  how 
two  shepherds  found  Silenus  off  his  guard,  bound 
him,  and  demanded  songs  that  he  had  long  promised. 
The  reader  will  recall,  of  course,  how  Plato  also 
likened  his  teacher  Socrates  to  Silenus.  Silenus  sang 
indeed  till  hills  and  valleys  thrilled  with  the  music: 
of  creation  of  sun  and  moon,  the  world  of  living 
things,  the  golden  age,  and  of  the  myths  of 
Prometheus,  Phaeton,  Pasiphae,  and  many  others 5 
he  even  sang  of  how  Gallus  had  been  captured  by  the 
Muses  and  been  made  a  minister  of  Apollo. 

A  strange  pastoral  it  has  seemed  to  many!     And 

*  Skutsch  roused  a  storm  of  discussion  over  it  by  insisting  that 
it  was  a  catalogue  of  poems  written  by  Gallus  i^Aus  Vergilt 
Fruhzeit.)  Cartault,  Etude  sur  les  Bucoliques  de  Virgile  (p* 
285),  almost  accepts  Servius'  suggestion:  "  un  resume  de  ses 
lectures  et  de  ses  etudes." 


/ 


LAST  DAYS  AT  THE  GARDEN  97 
yet  not  so  strange  when  we  bear  in  mind  that  the 
books  of  Philodemus  reveal  Vergil  and  Quintilius 
Varus  as  fellow  students  at  Naples.  Surely  Servius 
has  provided  the  key.  The  whole  poem,  with 
its  references  to  old  myths,  is  merely  a  rehearsal  of 
schoolroom  reminiscences,  as  might  have  been 
guessed  from  the  fine  Lucretian  rhythms  with  which 
it  begins: 

Namque  canebat,  uti  magnum  per  inane  coacta 
Semina  terrarumque  animaeque  marisque  fuissent 
Et  liquidi  simul  ignis;  ut  his  exordia  primis 
Omnia  et  ipse  tener  mundi  concreverit  orbis; 
Tum  durare  solum  et  discludere  Nerea  ponto 
Coeperit,  et  rerum  paulatim  sumere  formas; 
lamque  novum  terrae  stupeant  lucescere  solem. 
Altius  atque  cadant  summotis  nubibus  imbres; 
Incipiant  silvae  cum  primum  surgere,  cumque 
Rara  per  ignaros  errent  animalia  montis. 

The  myths  that  follow  are  meant  to  continue  this 
list  of  subjects,  only  with  somewhat  less  blunt  ob- 
viousness. They  suggested  to  Varus  the  usual 
Epicurean  theories  of  perception,  imagination,  pas- 
sion, and  mental  aberrations,  subjects  that  Siro  must 
have  discussed  in  some  such  way  as  Lucretius  treated 
them  in  his  third  and  fourth  books  of  the  De  Rerum 

Natura. 

It  is,  of  course,  not  to  be  supposed  that  Siro  had 
lectured  upon  mythology  as  such.     But  the  Epi- 


Itt 


98  VERGIL 

curean  teachers,  despite  their  scorn  for  legends,  em- 
ployed them  for  pedagogical  purposes  in  several 
ways.  Lucretius,  for  instance,  uses  them  sometimes 
for  their  picturesqueness,  as  in  the  frooemium  and 
again  in  the  allegory  of  the  seasons  (V.  732).  He 
also  employs  them  in  a  Euhemeristic  fashion,  ex- 
plaining them  as  popular  allegories  of  actual  human 
experiences,  citing  the  myths  of  Tantalus  and  Sisy- 
phus, for  example,  as  expressions  of  the  ever-present 
dread  of  punishment  for  crimes.  Indeed  Vergil  him- 
self in  the  Aetna  —  if  it  be  his  —  somewhat  naively 
introduced  the  battle  of  the  giants  for  its  picturesque 
interest.  It  is  only  after  he  had  enjoyed  telling  the 
story  in  full  that  he  checked  himself  with  the  blunt 
remark: 

(1.  74)      Haec  est  mendosae  vulgata  h'centia  famae. 

Lucretius  is  little  less  amusing  in  his  rejection  of  the 

Cybele  myth,  after  a  lovely  passage  of  forty  lines 

(II,  600)  devoted  to  it. 
f    Vergil  was,  therefore,  on  familiar  ground  when 

he  tried  to  remind  his  schoolmate  of  Siro's  philo- 
j  sophical  themes  by  designating  each  of  them  by  ■ 
/   means  of  an  appropriate  myth.     Perhaps  we,  who 

unlike  Varus  have  not  heard'  the  original  lectures, 
;    may  not  be  able  in  every  case  to  discover  the  theme 

from  the  myth,  but  the  poet  has  at  least  set  us  out 


LAST   DAYS   AT   THE    GARDEN         99 

on  the  right  scent  by  making  the  first  riddles  very 
easy.  The  lapdes  Pyrrhae  (1.  41)  refer  of  course 
to  the  creation  of  manj  SaPurnia  regna  is,  in  Epi- 
curean lore,  the  primitive  life  of  the  early  savages  5 
furtum  Promethei  (1.  42)  must  refer  to  Epicurus' 
explanation  of  how  fire  came  from  clashing  trees 
and  from  lightning.  The  story  of  Hylas  (1.  43) 
probably  reminded  Varus  of  Siro's  lecture  on  images 
and  reflection,  Pasiphae  (1.  ^6)  of  unruly  passions, 
explained  perhaps  as  in  Lucretius'  fourth  book, 
Atalanta  (1.  61)  of  greed,  and  Phaeton  of  ambition. 
As  for  Scylla,  Vergil  had  himself  in  the  Cirls  (1.  69) 
mentioned,  only  to  reject,  the  allegorical  interpre- 
tation here  presented,  according  to  which  she 
portrays: 

"  the  sin  of  lustf  ulness 
and  love's  incontinence." 

Vergil  had  not  then  met  Siro,  but  he  may  have  read 
some  of  his  lectures. 

« 

Finally,  the  strange  lines  on  Cornelius  Callus 
might  find  a  ready  explanation  if  we  knew  whether 
or  not  Callus  had  also  been  a  member  of  the  Nea- 
politan circle.  Probus,  if  we  may  believe  him,  sug- 
gests the  possibility  in  calling  him  a  schoolmate  of 
VergiPs,  and  a  plausible  interpretation  of  this  eclogue 
turns  that  possibility  into  a  probability.  The  pas- 
sage (11.  64-73)  ^^y  well  be  VergiPs  way  of  re- 


1 


lOO 


VERGIL 

calling  to  Varus  a  well-beloved  fellow-student  who 
had  left  the  circle  to  become  a  poet. 

The  whole  poem,  therefore,  is  a  delightful  com- 
mentary  upon  Vergil's  life  in  Siro's  garden,  written 
probably  after  Siro  had  died,  the  school  closed,  and 
Varus  gone  oflF  to  war.  The  younger  man's  school 
days  are  now  overj  he  had  found  his  idiom  in  a 
poetic  form  to  which  Messalla's  experiments  had 
drawn  him.  The  Eclogues  are  already  appearing  in 
r^pid  succession. 


IX 

MATERIALISM  IN  THE  SERVICE 

OF   POETRY 

I 
It  has  been  remarked  that  Vergil's  genius  was  of    '' 

slow  growth  5  he  was  twenty-eight  before  he  wrote 
any  verses  that  his  mature  judgment  recognized  as 
worthy  of  publication.  A  survey  of  his  early  life 
reveals  some  of  the  reasons  for  this  tardy  devel- 
opment. Born  and  schooled  in  a  province  he  was 
naturally  held  back  by  lack  of  those  contacts  which 
stimulate  boys  of  the  city  to  rapid  mental  growth. 
The  first  few  years  at  Rome  were  in  some  measure 
wasted  upon  a  subject  for  which  he  had  neither  taste 
nor  endowment.  The  banal  rhetorical  training 
might  indeed  have  made  a  Lucan  or  a  Juvenal  out  of 
him  had  he  not  finally  revolted  so  decisively.  How- 
ever, this  work  at  Rome  proved  not  to  be  a  total  loss. 
His  choice  of  a  national  theme  for  an  epic  and  his 
insight  into  the  true  qualities  of  imperial  Rome  owe  - 
something  to  the  study  of  political  questions  that  his 
preparation  for  a  public  career  had  necessitated. 
He  learned  something  in  his  Roman  days  that  not 
even  Epicurean  scorn  for  politics  could  eradicate. 

lOI 


h; 


til' 


j 


Pi 


102  VERGIL 

However,  his  next  decision,  to  devote  his  life  to 
philosophy,  again  retarded  his  poetic  development. 
Certainly  it  held  him  in  leash  during  the  years  of 
adolescent  enthusiasms  when  he  might  have  become 
a  lyric  poet  of  the  neoteric  school.  A  Catullus  or  a 
Keats  must  be  caught  early.  Indeed  the  very  dog- 
mas of  the  Epicurean  school,  if  taken  in  all  earnest- 
ness, were  suppressive  of  lyrical  enthusiasm.  The 
Aetna  shows  perhaps  the  worst  effects  of  Epicurean 
doctrine  in  its  scholastic  insistence  that  myths  must 
now  give  way  to  facts.  Its  author  was  still  too  ab- 
sorbed in  the  microscopic  analysis  of  a  petty  piece  of 
research  to  catch  the  spirit  of  Lucretius  who  had 
found  in  the  visions  of  the  scientific  workshop  a 
majesty  and  beauty  that  partook  of  the  essence  of 
poetry. 

In  the  end  VergiPs  poetry,  like  that  of  Lucretius, 
owed  more  to  Epicureanism  than  modern  critics  — 
too  often  obsessed  by  a  misapplied  odium  fhilosofh- 
icum  —  have  been  inclined  to  admit.  It  is  all  too 
easy  to  compare  this  philosophy  with  other  systems, 
past  and  present,  and  to  prove  its  science  inadequate, 
its  implications  unethical,  and  its  attitude  towards  art 
banal.  But  that  is  not  a  sound  historical  method  of 
approach.  The  student  of  Vergil  should  rather  re- 
member how  great  was  the  need  of  that  age  for 
some  practical  philosophy  capable  of  lifting  the  mind 


MATERIALISM    IN    POETRY  103 

out  of  the  stupor  in  which  a  hybrid  mythology  had 
left  it,  and  how,  when  Platonic  idealism  had  been 
wrecked  by  the  skeptics,  and  Stoicism  with  its  hypo- 
thetical premises  had  repelled  many  students.  Epi- 
curean positivism  came  as  a  saving  gospel  of  en- 
lightenment. 

The  system,  despite  its  inadequate  first  answers, 
employed  a  scientific  method  that  gave  the  Romans 
faith  in  many  of  its  results,  just  at  a  time  when 
orthodox  mythology  had  yielded  before  the  first 
critical  inspection.  As  a  preliminary  system  of  il- 
lumination it  proved  invaluable.  Untrained  in 
metaphysical  processes  of  thought,  ignorant  of  the 
tools  of  exact  science,  the  Romans  had  as  yet  been 
granted  no  answers  to  their  growing  curiosity  about 
nature  except  those  offered  by  a  hopelessly  naive 
faith.  Stoicism  had  first  been  brought  over  by  Greek 
teachers  as  a  possible  guide,  but  the  Roman,  now 
trained  by  his  extraordinary  career  in  world  politics 
to  think  in  terms  of  experience,  could  have  but  little 
patience  with  a  metaphysical  system  that  constantly 
took  refuge  in  a  faith  in  aprioristic  logic  which  had 
already  been  successfully  challenged  by  two  centuries 
of  skeptics.  The  Epicurean  at  least  kept  his  feet  on 
the  ground,  appealed  to  the  practical  man's  faith  in 
his  own  senses,  and  plausibly  propped  his  hypotheses 
with  analogous  illustrations,  oftentimes  approaching 


\ 


II 


m 


if 


I  f  • 


i 


(!l 


104  VERGIL 

very  close  to  the  cogent  methods  of  a  new  inductive 
logic.  He  rested  his  case  at  least  on  the  processes 
of  argumentation  that  the  Roman  daily  applied  in 
the  law-courts  and  the  Senate,  and  not  upon  flights 
of  metaphysical  reasoning.  He  came  with  a  gospel  of 
illumination  to  a  race  eager  for  light,  opening  vistas 
into  an  infinity  of  worlds  marvelously  created  by 
processes  that  the  average  man  beheld  in  his  daily 
walks. 

I      It  was  this  capacity  of  the  Epicurean  philosophy 

I  to  free  the  imagination,  to  lift  man  out  of  a  trivial 

I  mythology  into  a  world  of  infinite  visions,  and  to 

satisfy  man's  curiosity  regarding  the  universe  with 

angible  answers^  that  especially  attracted  Romans 

lof  VergiPs  day  to  the  new  philosophy.     Their  ex- 

Iperience  was  not  unlike  that  of  numberless  men  of 

the  last  generation  who  first  escaped  from  a  puerile 

cosmology  by  way  of  popularized  versions  of  Dar- 

.  winism  which  the  experts  condemned  as  unscientific. 

Furthermore,  Epicureanism  provided  a  view  of 

nature  which  was  apt  in  the  minds  of  an  imaginative 

poet  to  lead  toward  romanticism.     Stoicism  indeed 

pretended  to  be  pantheistic,  and  Wordsworth  has 

demonstrated  the  value  to  romanticism  of  that  atti- 

^  It  IS  not  quite  accurate  to  say  that  the  Romans  made  a 
dogma  of  Epicurus'  ifse  dixit  which  destroyed  scientific  open- 
mindedness.  Vergil  uses  Posidonius  and  Zeno  as  freely  as 
the  Stoic  Seneca  does  Epicurus. 


S 


I 


MATERIALISM  iIN    POETRY  105 

tude.  But  to  the  clear -of -vision  Stoicism  im- 
mediately took  from  nature  with  one  hand  what  it 
had  given  with  the  other.  Invariably,  its  rule  of 
"  follow  nature  "  had  to  be  defined  in  terms  that 
proved  its  distrust  of  what  the  world  called  nature. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Stoic  had  only  scorn  for 
naturalism.  Physical  man  was  to  him  a  creature  to 
be  chained.  Trust  not  the  "  scelerata  pulpaj  peccat 
et  haec,  peccat!  "  cries  Persius  in  terror. 

The  earlier  naive  animism  of  Greece  and  Rome 
had  contained  more  of  aesthetic  value,  for  it  was  the 
very  spring  from  which  had  flowed  all  the  wealth  of 
ancient  myths.  But  the  nymphs  of  that  stream  were 
dead,  slain  by  philosophical  questioning.  The  new 
poetic  myth-making  that  still  showed  the  influence 
of  an  old  habit  of  mind  was  apt  to  be  rather  self- 
conscious  and  diffident,  ending  in  something  re- 
sembling the  pathetic  fallacy. 

Epicureanism  on  the  other  hand  by  employing  the 
theory  of  evolution  was  able  to  unite  man  and  na- 
ture once  more.  And  since  man  is  so  self -centered 
that  his  imagination  refuses  to  extend  sympathetic 
treatment  to  nature  unless  he  can  feel  a  vital  bond 
of  fellowship  with  it,  the  poetry  of  romance  became 
possible  only  upon  the  discovery  of  that  unity.  This 
is  doubtless  why  Lucretius,  first  of  all  the  Romans,  1 
could  in  his  prooemium  bring  back  to  nature  that      \ 


io6  VERGIL 

sensuousness  which  through  the  songs  of  the  trouba- 
dours has  become  the  central  theme  of  romantic 
poetry  even  to  our  day. 

Nam  simulac  species  patefactast  verna  diei  .  •  • 
Aeriae  primum  volucres  te  diva  tuumque 
Significant  initum  perculsae  corda  tua  vi, 
Inde  ferae  pecudes  persultant  pabula  laeta. 

Vergil,  convinced  by  the  same  philosophy,  expresses 
himself  similarly: 

Et  genus  aequoreum,  pecudes,  pictaeque  volucres 

amor  omnibus  idem. 

And  again: 

Avia  tum  resonant  avibus  virgulta  canons 
Et  Venerem  certis  repetunt  armenta  diebus 
Parturit  almus  ager   Zepherique   trementibus  auris 
Laxant  arva  sinus. 

It  is,  of  course,  the  theme  of  "  Sumer  is  icumen  in." 
Lucretius  feels  so  strongly  the  unity  of  naturally 
evolved  creation  that  he  never  hesitates  to  compare 
men  of  various  temperaments  with  animals  of  sundry 
natures  —  the  fiery  lion,  the  cool-tempered  ox  — 
and  explain  the  differences  in  both  by  the  same  pre- 
ponderance of  some  peculiar  kind  of  "  soul-atoms." 
Obviously  this  was  a  system  which,  by  enlarging 
man's  mental  horizon  and  sympathies,  could  create 
new  values  for  aesthetic  use.    Like  the  crude  evo- 


III 


MATERIALISM   IN   POETRY  107 

lutionistic  hypotheses  in  Rousseau's  day,  it  gave  one 
a  more  soundly  based  sympathy  for  one's  fellows  — 
since  evolution  was  not  yet  "  red  in  tooth  and  claw." 
If  nature  was  to  be  trusted,  why  not  man's  nature? 
Why  curse  the  body,  any  man's  body,  as  the  root- 
ground  of  sin?  Were  not  the  instincts  a  part  of 
man?  Might  not  the  scientific  view  prove  that  the 
passions  so  far  from  being  diseases,  conditioned  the 
very  life  and  survival  of  the  race?  Perhaps  the 
evils  of  excess,  called  sin,  were  after  all  due  to  de- 
fects in  social  and  political  institutions  that  had  ap- 
plied incorrect  regulative  principles,  or  to  the  self- 
ishly imposed  religious  fears  which  had  driven  the 
healthy  instincts  into  tantrums.  Rid  man  of  these 
erroneous  fears  and  of  a  political  system  begot  for 
purposes  of  exploitation  and  see  whether  by  return- 
ing to  an  age  of  primitive  innocence  he  cannot  prove 
that  nature  is  trustworthy.^ 

There  is  In  this  philosophy  then  a  basis  for  a  large 
humanitarianism,  dangerous  perhaps  in  its  implica- 
tions. And  yet  it  could  hardly  have  been  more 
perilous  than  the  Roman  orthodox  religion  which  in- 
sisted only  upon  formal  correctness,  seldom  upon 
ethical  decorum,  or  than  Stoicism  with  its  categori- 
cal imperative,  which  could  restrain  only  those  who 
were  already  convinced.     The  Stoic  pretence  of 

2  Lucretius,  III,  37-93;  II,  23-39;  V,  iioj-1135. 


I" 


i 


M 


1 08  VERGIL 

appealing  to  a  natural  law  could  be  proved  illogi- 
cal at  first  examination,  when  driven  to  admit  that 
"  nature ''  must  be  explained  by  a  question-begging 
definition  before  its  rule  could  be  applied. 

Indeed  the  Romans  of  Vergil's  day  had  not  been 
accustomed  to  look  for  ethical  sanctions  in  religion 
or  creed.  Morality  had  always  been  for  them  a 
matter  of  family  custom,  parental  teaching  of  the 
rules  of  decorum,  legal  doctrine  regarding  the  uni- 
versality of  aequitasy  and,  more  than  they  knew,  of 
puritanic  instincts  inherited  from  a  well-sifted  stock. 
It  probably  did  not  occur  to  Lucretius  and  Vergil 
to  ask  whether  this  new  philosophy  encouraged  a 
higher  or  a  lower  ethical  standard.  Cicero,  as  states- 
man, doesj  but  the  question  had  doubtless  come  to 
him  first  out  of  the  literature  of  the  Academy  which 
he  was  wont  to  read.  Despite  their  creed,  Lucretius 
and  Vergil  are  indeed  Rome's  foremost  apostles  of 
Righteousness  j  and  if  anyone  had  pressed  home  the| 
charge  of  possible  moral  weakness  in  their  system 
they  might  well  have  pointed  to  the  exemplary  life 
of  Epicurus  and  many  of  his  followers.  To  the 
Romans  this  philosophy  brought  a  creed  of  wide 
sympathies  with  none  of  the  "  lust  for  sensation  " 
that  accompanied  its  return  in  the  days  of  Rousseau 
and  "Werther."  Had  not  the  old  Roman  stock, 
sound  in  marrow  and  clear  of  eye,  been  shattered  by 


I 


MATERIALISM    IN    POETRY  109 

wars  and  thinned  out  by  emigration,  only  to  be  dis- 
placed by  a  more  nervous  and  impulsive  people  that 
had  come  in  by  the  slave  trade,  Roman  civilization 
would  hardly  have  suffered  from  the  application  of 
the  doctrines  of  Epicurus. 

Whether  or  not  Vergil  remained  an  Epicurean  to 
the  end,  we  must,  to  be  fair,  give  credit  to  that  phil- 
osophy for  much  that  is  most  poetical  in  his  later 
work,  —  a  romantic  charm  in  the  treatment  of  na- 
ture, a  deep  comprehension  of  man's  temper,  a 
broader  sympathy  with  humanity  and  a  clearer 
understanding  of  the  difference  between  social  vir- 
tue and  mere  ritualistic  correctness  than  was  to  be  ex- 
pected of  a  Roman  at  this  time. 

It  is,  however,  very  probable  that  Vergil  remained 
on  the  whole  faithful  to  this  creed  ^  to  the  very  end. 
He  was  forty  years  of  age  and  only  eleven  years 
from  his  death  when  he  published  the  GeorgicSy 
which  are  permeated  with  the  Epicurean  view  of 
nature;  and  the  restatement  of  this  creed  in  the  first 
book  of  the  Aeneid  ought  to  warn  us  that  his  faith 
in  it  did  not  die. 

^  This  IS,  of  course,  not  the  view  of  Sellar,  Conington, 
Glover,  and  Norden,  —  to  mention  but  a  few  of  those  who 
hold  that  Vergil  became  a  Stoic.  See  chapter  XV  for  a 
development  of  this  view. 


•  I 


RECUBANS  SUB  TEGMINE  FAGI 

The  visitor  to  Arcadia  should  perhaps  be  urged 
to  leave  his  microscope  at  home.  Happiest,  at  any 
rate,  is  the  reader  of  VergiPs  pastorals  who  can  take 
an  unannotated  pocket  edition  to  his  vacation  re- 
treat, forgetting  what  every  inquisitive  Donatus  has 
conjectured  about  the  possible  hidden  meanings  that 
lie  in  them.  But  the  biographer  may  not  share  that 
pleasure.  The  Eclogues  were  soon  burdened  with 
comments  by  critics  who  sought  in  them  for  the 
secrets  of  an  early  career  hidden  in  the  obscurity  of 
an  unannaled  provincial  life.  In  their  eager  search 
for  data  they  forced  every  possible  passage  to  yield 
some  personal  allusion,  till  the  poems  came  to  be 
nothing  but  a  symbolic  biography  of  the  author. 
The  modem  student  must  delve  into  this  material 
if  only  to  clear  away  a  little  of  the  allegory  that 
obscures  the  text. 

It  is  well  to  admit  honestly  at  once  that  modern 
criticism  has  no  scientific  method  which  can  with 
absolute  accuracy  sift  out  all  the  falsehoods  that 
obscure  the  truth  in  this  matter,  but  at  least  a  be- 

IIO 


IH 


RECUBANS   SUB   TEGMINE   FAGI      iii 

ginning  has  been  made  in  demonstrating  that  the 
glosses  are  not  themselves  consistent.  Those  early 
commentators  who  variously  place  the  confiscation 
of  VergiPs  farm  after  the  battle  of  Mutina  (43 
B.  c),  after  Philippi  (42)  and  after  Actium  (31), 
who  conceive  of  Mark  Antony  as  a  partizan  of 
Brutus,  and  Alfenus  Varus  as  the  governor  of  a 
province  that  did  not  exist,  may  state  some  real  facts: 
they  certainly  hazard  many  futile  guesses.  The 
safest  way  is  to  trust  these  records  only  when  they 
harmonize  with  the  data  provided  by  reliable  his- 
torians, and  to  interpret  the  Eclogues  primarily  as 
imaginative  pastoral  poetry,  and  not,  except  when 
they  demand  it,  as  a  personal  record.  We  shall 
here  treat  the  Bucolics  in  what  seems  to  be  their 
order  of  composition,  not  the  order  of  their  position 
in  the  collection. 

The  eulogy  of  Messalla,  written  in  42  b.  c,  re- 
veals Vergil  already  at  work  upon  pastoral  themes, 
to  which,  as  he  tells  us,  Messalla's  Greek  eclogues 
had  called  his  attention.  We  may  then  at  once  re- 
ject the  statement  of  the  scholiasts  that  Vergil  wrote 
the  Eclogues  for  the  purpose  of  thanking  PoUio, 
Alfenus,  and  Gallus  for  having  saved  his  estates 
from  confiscation.  At  least  a  full  half  of  these 
poems  had  been  written  before  there  was  any  mate- 
rial cause  for  gratitude,  and,  as  we  shall  see  presently, 


im 


1^ 


I 
11 


ii 


ii  !!■ 


Hi 


if 


I 


112  VERGIL 

.  these  three  men  had  in  any  case  little  to  do  with  the 
matter.  It  will  serve  as  a  good  antidote  against 
the  conjectures  of  the  allegorizing  school  if  we  re- 
member that  these  commentators  of  the  Empire  were 
for  the  most  part  Greek  freedmen,  themselves 
largely  occupied  in  fawning  upon  their  patrons. 
They  apparently  assumed  that  poets  as  a  matter  of 
course  wrote  what  they  did  in  order  to  please  some 
patron  —  a  questionable  enough  assumption  regard- 
ing any  Roman  poetry  composed  before  the  Silver 
Age. 

The  second  Eclogue  is  a  very  early  study  which, 
,  in  the  theme  of  the  gift-bringing,  seems  to  be 
j  reminiscent  of  Messalla's  work.'  The  third  and 
seventh  are  also  generally  accepted  as  early  experi- 
ments in  the  more  realistic  forms  of  amoebean  pas- 
toral. Since  the  fifth,  which  should  be  placed  early 
in  41  B.  c,  actually  cites  the  second  and  third,  we 
have  a  terminus  ante  que'^n  for  these  two  eclogues. 
To  the  early  list  the  tenth  should  be  added  if  it  was 
addressed  to  Gallus  while  he  was  still  doing  military 
service  in  Greece,  and  with  these  we  may  place  the 
sixth,  discussed  above. 

The  lack  of  realistic  local  color  in  these  pastorals 
has  frequently  been  criticized,  on  the  supposition 
that  Vergil  wrote  them  while  at  home  in  Mantua, 

*  See  Chapter  VIII. 


i 


\y 


>/ 


v/ 


• 


RECUBANS   SUB   TEGMINE   FAGI      113 

and  ought,  therefore,  to  have  given  true  pictures  of 
Mantuan  scenery  and  characters.  His  home  country 
was  and  is  a  montonous  plain.  The  jutting  crags 
with  their  athletic  goats,  the  grottoes  inviting 
melodious  shepherds  to  neglect  their  flocks,  the 
mountain  glades  and  waterfalls  of  the  Eclogues  can 
of  course  not  be  Mantuan.  The  Po  Valley  was 
thickly  settled,  and  its  deep  black  soil  intensively 
cultivated.  A  few  sheep  were,  of  course,  kept  to 
provide  wool,  but  these  were  herded  by  farmers' 
boys  in  the  orchards.  The  lone  she-goat,  indispen- 
sable to  every  Italian  household,  was  doubtless 
tethered  by  a  leg  on  the  roadside.  There  were 
herds  of  swine  where  the  old  oak  forests  had  not 
yet  been  cut,  but  the  swine-herd  is  usually  not 
reckoned  among  songsters.  Nor  was  any  poetry  to 
be  expected  from  the  cowboys  who  managed  the 
cattle  ranches  at  the  foot  hills  of  the  Alps  and  the 
buifalo  herds  along  the  undrained  lowlands.  Is 
VergiPs  scenery  then  nothing  but  literary  reminis- 
cence? 

In  point  of  fact  the  pastoral  scenery  in  Vergil 
is  Neapolitan.  The  eighth  Catalepton  is  proof  that 
Vergil  was  at  Naples  when  he  heard  of  the  dangers 
to  his  father's  property  in  the  North.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  Vergil  ever  again  saw  Mantua  after  leaving 
it  for  Cremona  in  his  early  boyhood.    The  property. 


U- 


iMt 


Ill 


^i 


114  VERGIL 

of  course,  belonged  not  to  him  but  to  his  father,  who, 
as  the  brief  poem  indicates,  had  remained  there  with 
his  family.    The  pastoral  scenery  seldom,  except  in 
the  ninth  Eclogue,  pretends  to  be  Mantuan.    Even 
where,  as  in  the  first,  the  poem  is  intended  to  convey 
a  personal  expression  of  gratitude  for  VergiPs  ex- 
emption from  harsh  evictions,  the  poet  is  very  care- 
ful not  to  obtrude  a  picture  of  himself  or  his  own 
circumstances.    Tityrus  is  an  old  man,  and  a  slave  in 
a  typical  shepherd's  country,  such  as  could  be  seen 
every  day  in  the  mountains  near  Naples.    And  there 
were  as  many  evictions  near  Naples  as  in  the  North. 
Indeed  it  is  the  Neapolitan  country  —  as  picturesque 
as  any  in   Italy  —  that   constantly   comes  to  the 
reader's  mind.  We  are  told  by  Seneca  that  thousands 
of  sheep  fed  upon  the  rough  mountains  behind 
Stabiae,  and  the  clothier's  hall  and  numerous  f  uller- 
ies  of  Pompeii  remind  us  that  wool-growing  was  an 
important  industry  of  that  region.     VergiPs  excur- 
sion to  Sorrento  was  doubtless  not  the  only  visit 
across  the  bay.    Behind  Naples  along  the  ridge  of 
Posilipo,''  below  which  Vergil  was  later  buried,  in  the 

2  The  picturesque  road  from  Naples  to  Puteoli  clung  to  the 
edge  of  the  rocky  promontory  of  Posilipo,  finally  piercing  the 
outermost  rock  by  means  of  a  tunnel  now  misnamed  the  "  grotto 
di  Sejano."  Most  of  the  road  is  now  under  twenty  feet  of 
water:  Sec  Gunther,  Pausilyfon.  To  see  the  splendid  ridge  as 
Vergil  saw  it  from  the  road  one  must  now  row  the  length  of  it 
from  Naples  to  Nesida,  sketching  in  an  abundance  of  ilexes  and 
goats  in  place  of  the  villas  that  now  cover  it. 


I 


RECUBANS   SUB   TEGMINE   FAGI      115 

mountains  about  Camaldoli,  and  behind  Puteoli  all 
the  way  to  Avernus  —  a  country  which  the  poet  had 
roamed  with  observant  eyes  —  there  could  have  been 
nothing  but  shepherd  country.  Here,  then,  are  the 
crags  and  waterfalls  and  grottoes  that  Vergil  de- 
scribes in  the  Eclogues, 

And  here,  too,  were  doubtless  as  many  melodious 
shepherds  as  ever  Theocritus  found  in  Sicily,  for 
they  were  of  the  same  race  of  people  as  the  Sicilians. 
Why  should  the  slopes  of  Lactarius  be  less  musical 
than  those  of  Aetna?  Indeed  the  reasonable  reader 
will  find  that,  except  for  an  occasional  transference 
of  actual  persons  into  Arcadian  setting  —  by  an  al- 
legorical turn  invented  before  Vergil  —  there  is  no 
serious  confusion  in  the  scenery  or  inconsistent  treat- 
ment in  the  plots  of  VergiPs  Eclogues,  But  by  fail- 
ing to  make  this  simple  assumption  —  naturally  due 
any  and  every  poet  —  readers  of  Vergil  have  need- 
lessly marred  the  eflFect  of  some  of  his  finest  pas- 
sages. 

The  fifth  Eclogue,  written  probably  in  41  b..c,, 
IS  a  very  melodious  Daphnis-song  that  has  always 
been  a  favorite  with  poets.  It  has  been  and  may  be 
read  with  entire  pleasure  as  an  elegy  to  Daphnis,  the 
patron  god  of  singing  shepherds.  Those,  however, 
who  in  Roman  times  knew  VergiPs  love  of  sym- 
bolism, suspected  that  a  more  personal  interest  led 


t! 


i^ 


1 


if 


ti  I 


ii6  VERGIL 

him  to  compose  this  elegy.  The  death  and  apotheo- 
sis of  Julius  Caesar  is  still  thought  by  some  to  be 
the  real  subject  of  the  poem,  while  a  few  have  ac- 
cepted another  ancient  conjecture  that  Vergil  here 
wrote  of  his  brother.  The  person  mourned  must, 
however,  have  been  of  more  importance  than  Ver- 
gil's brother.  On  the  other  hand,  certain  details  in 
the  poem  —  the  sorrow  of  the  mother,  for  instance 
—  preclude  the  conjecture  that  it  was  Caesar,  unless 
the  poet  is  here  confusing  his  details  more  than  we 
need  assume  in  any  other  eclogue. 

It  is  indeed  difEcult  to  escape  the  very  old  per- 
suasion that  a  sorrow  so  sympathetically  expressed 
must  be  more  than  a  mere  Theocritan  reminiscence.   ^ 
If  we  could  find  some  poet  —  for  Daphnis  must  be 
that  —  near  to  Vergil  himself,  who  met  an  unhappy 
death  in  those  days,  a  poet,  too,  who  died  in  such 
circumstances  during  the  civil  strife  that  general  ex- 
pression of  grief  had  to  be  hidden  behind  a  symbolic 
veil,  would  not  the  poem  thereby  gain  a  theme 
worthy  of  its  grace?     I  think  we  have  such  a  poet 
in  Comificius,  the  dear  friend  of  Catullus,  to  whom    -^ 
in  fact  Catullus  addressed  what  seem  to  be  his  last 
verses.^    Like  so  many  of  the  new  poets,  Cornificius 
had  espoused  Caesar's  cause,  but  at  the  end  was  in- 
duced by  Cicero  to  support  Brutus  against  the  trium- 

'  Catullus,  38. 


RECUBANS    SUB    TEGMINE    FAGI       117 

virs.  After  Philippi  Comificius  kept  up  the  hope- 
less struggle  in  Africa  for  several  months  imtil 
finally  he  was  defeated  and  put  to  death.  If  he  be 
VergiPs  Daphnis  we  have  an  explanation  of  why 
his  identity  escaped  the  notice  of  curious  scholars. 
Tactful  silence  became  quite  necessary  at  a  time  when 
almost  every  household  at  Rome  was  rent  by  divided 
sympathies,  and  yet  brotherhood  in  art  could  hardly 
be  entirely  stifled.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
masters  of  Rome,  Cornificius  had  met  a  just  doom  as 
a  rebel.  If  his  poet  friends  mourned  for  him  it 
must  have  been  in  some  such  guise  as  this. 

In  this  instance  the  circumstantial  evidence  is 
rather  strong,  for  we  are  told  by  a  commentator  that 
Valgius,  an  early  friend  of  VergiPs,  wrote  elegies  to 
the  memory  of  a  "  Codrus,"  identified  by  some  as 
Cornificius:* 

Codrusque  ille  canit  quali  tu  voce  canebas, 
Atque  solet  numeros  dicere  Cinna  tuos. 

That  "  shepherd "  at  least  is  an  actual  person,  a 
friend  of  Cinna,  and  a  member  of  the  neoteric 
group;  that  indeed  it  is  Comificius  is  exceedingly 
probable.  The  poet-patriot  seems  then  not  to  have 
been  forgotten  by  his  friends. 

*  Scholia  Veronensiay  Eel.  VII,  22.     The  cadence  is  pre- 
sented in  Classical  Review^  1920,  p.  49. 


i| 


a 


w  tl 


ii8  VERGIL 

All  too  little  is  known  about  this  friend  of  Catul- 
lus and  Cinna,  but  what  is  known  excites  a  keen 
interest.    Though  he  was  younger  than  Cicero  by 
nearly  a  generation,  the  great  orator '  did  him  no 
little  deference  as  a  representative  of  the  Atticis- 
tic  group.     In  verse  writing  he  was  of  Catullus' 
school,   composing  at  least   one   epyllion,   besides 
lyric  verse.     According  to  Macrobius,  Vergil  paid 
him  the  compliment  of  imitating  him,  and  he  in 
turn  is  cited  by  the  scholiasts  as  authority  for  an  opin- 
ion of  VergiPs.     If  the  Daphnis-song  is  an  elegy 
written  at  his  death  —  and  it  would  be  diiBcult  to 
find  a  more  fitting  subject  —  the  poem,  undoubtedly 
one  of  the  most  charming  of  VergiPs  Eclogues,  was 
composed  in  41  b.  c.     It  were  a  pity  if  VergiPs 
prayer  for  the  poet  should  after  all  not  come  true: 

Semper  honos,  nomcnque  tuum  laudesque  manebunt. 

^^^  ^^51?!  Eclogue,  to  Gallus,  steeped  in  all  the 
literary  associations  of  pastoral  elegies,  from  the 
time  of  Theocritus'  Daphnis  to  our  own  "  Lycidas  " 
and  "  Adonais,"  has  perhaps  surrounded  itself  with 
an  atmosphere  that  should  not  be  disturbed  by  bio- 
graphical details.  However,  we  must  intrude.  Ver- 
giPs associations  with  Gallus,  as  has  been  intimated, 
were  those,  apparently,  of  Neapolitan  school  days 

^  See  Cicero's  letter  to  him:  Ad  Fam.  XII,  17,  2. 


RECUBANS   SUB   TEGMINE   FAGI      119 

and  of  poetry.  The  sixth  Eclogue  delicately  Im- 
plies that  the  departure  of  Gallus  from  the  circle 
had  made  a  very  deep  impression  upon  his  teacher 
and  fellow  students. 

What  would  we  not  barter  of  all  the  sesquipeda- 
lian epics  of  the  Empire  for  a  few  pages  written  by 
Cornelius  Gallus,  a  thousand  for  each!  This  bril- 
liant, hot-headed,  over-grown  boy,  whom  every  one 
loved,  was  very  nearly  VergiPs  age.  A  Celt,  as  one 
might  conjecture  from  his  career,  he  had  met  Oc- 
tavius  in  the  schoolroom,  and  won  the  boy's  en- 
during admiration.  Then,  like  Vergil,  he  seems  to 
have  turned  from  rhetoric  to  philosophy,  from 
philosophy  to  poetry,  and  to  poetry  of  the  CatuUan 
romances,  as  a  matter  of  course.  It  was  Cytheris, 
the  fickle  actress  —  if  the  scholiasts  are  right  — 
who  opened  his  eyes  to  the  fact  that  there  were 
themes  for  passionate  poetry  nearer  home  than  the 
legendary  love-tales  j  and  when  she  forgot  him,  find- 
ing excitement  elsewhere  during  his  months  of  serv- 
ice with  Octavian,  he  nursed  his  morbid  grief  in  un- 
Roman  self-pity,  this  first  poet  of  the  foitrinaire 
school.  His  subsequent  career  was  meteoric. 
Octavian,  fascinated  by  a  brilliancy  that  hid  a  lack 
of  Roman  steadiness,  placed  him  in  charge  of  the 
stupendous  task  of  organizing  Egypt,  a  work  that 
would  tax  the  powers  of  a  Caesar.  The  romantic  poet 


/ 


f 


V 


120  VERGIL 

lost  his  head.  Wine-inspired  orations  that  delighted 
his  guests,  portrait  busts  of  himself  in  every  town, 
grotesque  catalogues  of  campaigns  against  unheard- 
of  negro  tribes  inscribed  even  on  the  venerable 
pyramids  did  not  accord  with  the  traditions  of  Rome. 
Octavian  cut  his  career  short,  and  in  deep  chagrin 
Gallus  committed  suicide. 

The  tenth  Eclogue^  gives  VergiPs  impressions 
upon  reading  one  of  the  elegies  of  Gallus  which  had 
apparently  been  written  at  some  lonely  army  post 
in  Greece  after  the  news  of  Cytheris'  desertion.  In 
his  elegy  the  poet  had,  it  would  seem,  bemoaned  the 
lot  that  had  drawn  him  to  the  East  away  from  his 
beloved.  "Would  that  he  might  have  been  a 
simple  shepherd  like  the  Greeks  about  his  tent,  for 
their  loves  remained  true!  ''  And  this  is  of  course  . 
the  very  theme  which  Vergil  dramatizes  in  pastoral 
form. 

We,  like  Vergil,  realize  that  Gallus  invented  a 
new  genre  in  literature.  He  had  daringly  brought 
the  grief  of  wounded  love  out  of  the  realm  of  fiction 
—  where  classic  tradition  had  insisted  upon  keeping 
it  —  into  the  immediate  and  personal  song.  The 
hint  for  this  procedure  had,  of  course,  come  from 
Catullus,  but  it  was  Gallus  whom  succeeding  ele- 
gists  all  accredited  with  the  discovery.     Vergil  at 

•  This  is  the  interpretation  of  Leo,  Hermes,  1902,  p.  15^ 


RECUBANS    SUB    TEGMINE    FAGI       121 

once  felt  the  compelling  force  of  this  adventuresome 
experiment.  He  gave  it  immediate  recognition  in 
his  Eclogues,  and  TibuUus,  Propertius,  and  Ovid  be- 
came his  followers. 

The  poems  of  Gallus,  if  the  Arcadian  setting  is 
real,  were  probably  written  soon  after  Philippi. 
VergiPs  Eclogue  of  recognition  may  have  been  com- 
posed not  much  later,  for  we  have  a  right  to  assume 
that  Vergil  would  have  had  one  of  the  first  copies  of 
Gallus'  poems.  If  this  be  true,  the  first  and  last  few 
lines  were  fitted  on  later,  when  the  whole  book  was 
published,  to  adapt  the  poem  for  its  honorable  posi- 
tion at  the  close  of  the  volume. 


I 


f 


fi 


XI 

THE   EVICTIONS 

The  first  and  ninth  EclogueSy  and  only  these,  con-  j 
cern  the  confiscations  of  land  at  Cremona  and  Man- 
tua which  threatened  to  deprive  VergiPs  father  of 
his  estates  and  consequently  the  poet  of  his  income. 
There  seems  to  be  no  way  of  deciding  which  is  the 
earlier.  Ancient  commentators,  following  the  order 
of  precedence,  interpreted  the  ninth  as  an  indication 
of  a  second  eviction,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  sound 
reason  for  agreeing  with  them,  since  they  are  entirely 
too  literal  in  their  inferences.  Conington  sanely  de- 
cides that  only  one  eviction  took  place,  and  he  places 
the  ninth  before  the  first  in  order  of  time.  He  may 
be  right.  The  two  poems  at  any  rate  belong  to  the  "* 
early  months  of  41. 

The  obsequious  scholiasts  of  the  Empire  have  no- 
where so  thoroughly  exposed  their  own  mode  of 
thought  as  in  their  interpretations  of  these  two  Ec- 
logues. Knowing  and  caring  little  for  the  actual 
course  of  events,  having  no  comprehension  of  the  in- 
stitutions of  an  earlier  day,  concerned  only  with  ex- 
tracting what  is  to  them  a  dramatic  story  from  the 
'Eclogues^  they  put  all  the  historical  characters  into 

Z22 


THE   EVICTIONS  123 

impossible  situations.    The  one  thing  of  which  they 
feel  comfortably  sure  is  that  every  Eclogue  that  ^j 
mentions  Pollio,  Callus  and  Alfenus  Varus  must      ( 
have  been  a  "  bread  and  butter  "  poem  written  in       \ 
gratitude  for  value  received.    Of  the  close  literary      J 
associations  of  the  time  they  seem  to  be  unaware.  ^ 
To  suit  such  purposes  Pollio  ^  is  at  times  made  gover- 
nor of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  and  at  times  placed  on  the 
commission  to  colonize  Cremona,  Alfenus  is  made 
PoUio's  "successor"  in  a  province  that  does  not 
exist,  and  Callus  is  also  made  a  colonial  commis- 
sioner.   If,  however,  we  examine  these  statements 
in  the  light  of  facts  provided  by  independent  sources 
we  shall  find  that  the  whole  structure  based  upon 
the  subjective  inferences  of  the  scholiasts  falls  to 
the  ground. 

We  must  first  follow  Pollio's  career  through  this 
period.  When  the  triumvirate  was  formed  in  43, 
Pollio  was  made  Antony's  legatus  in  Cisalpine  Caul  ^ 
and  promised  the  consulship  for  the  year  40.^  After 
Philippi,  however,  in  the  autumn  of  42,  Cisalpine 
Caul  was  declared  a  part  of  Italy  and,  therefore,  * 
fell  out  of  Pollio's  control.^  Nevertheless,  he  was 
not  deprived  of  a  command  for  the  year  remaining 
before  his  consulship  (41  b.  c),  but  was  permitted 

*  See  Diehl,  VUae  Vergilianae,  pp.  5 1  iff. 

*  Appian,  IV.  2  and  V.  22. 

*  Appian,  V.  3  and  V.  22. 


I 


H 


11 


124  VERGIL 

to  withdraw  to  the  upper  end  of  the  Adriatic  with  his 
army  of  seven  legions/     His  duty  was  doubtless 
to  guard  the  low  Venetian  coast  against  the  remnants 
of  the  republican  forces  still  on  the  high  seas,  and, 
if  he  had  time,  to  subdue  the  lUyrian  tribes  friendly 
to  the  republican  cause/    During  this  year,  in  which 
Octavian  had  to  besiege  Lucius  Antony  at  Perusia, 
Pollio,  a  legatus  of  Mark  Antony,  was  naturally  not 
on  good  terms  with  Octavian,  and  could  hardly  have 
used  any  influence  in  behalf  of  Vergil  or  any  one 
else.    After  the  Perusine  war  he  joined  Antony  at 
Brundisium  in  the  spring  of  40,  and  acted  as  his  J 
spokesman   at   the   conference   which   led   to   the 
momentous  treaty  of  peace.     We  may,  therefore, 
safely  conclude  that  Pollio  was  neither  governor  nor  J 
colonial    commissioner    in    Cisalpine    Gaul    when 
Cremona  and  Mantua  were  disturbed,  nor  could  he 
have  been  on  such  terms  with  Octavian  as  to  use  his 
influence  in  behalf  of  Vergil.    The  eighth  and  fourth 
Eclogues  which  do  honor  to  him,  seem  to  have  noth- 
^  ing  whatever  to  do  with  material  favors.     They 
I  doubtless  owe  their  origin  to  PoUio's  position  as  a 
poet,  and  PoUio's  interest  in  young  men  of  letters. 

With  regard  to  Alfenus  and  Gallus,  the  scholiasts 
remained  somewhat  nearer  the  truth,  for  they  had  at 

*  Vclleius  Paterculus,  II.  76.2;  Macrobius,  Sat,  I.  XI.  22. 
®  A  task  which  he  performed  in  39. 


THE   EVICTIONS  125 

hand  a  speech  of  Gallus  criticizing  the  former  for 
his  behavior  at  Mantua.  By  quoting  the  precise 
words  of  this  speech  Servius  ®  has  provided  us  with 
a  solid  criterion  for  accepting  what  is  consistent  in 
the  statements  of  VergiPs  earlier  biographers  and 
eliminating  some  conjectures.  The  passage  reads: 
"  When  ordered  to  leave  unoccupied  a  district  of 
three  miles  outside  the  city,  you  included  within  the 
district  eight  hundred  paces  of  water  which  lies  about 
the  walls."  The  passage,  of  course,  shows  that 
Alfenus  was  a  commissioner  on  the  colonial  board, 
as  Servius  says.  Jt  does  not  excuse  Servius'  error  of 
making  Alfenus  PoUio's  successor  as  provincial 
governor  ^  after  Cisalpine  Gaul  had  become 
autonomous,  nor  does  it  imply  that  Alfenus  had  in 
any  manner  been  generous  to  Vergil  or  to  any  one 
else.  In  fact  it  reveals  Alfenus  in  the  act  of  seizing 
an  unreasonable  amount  of  land.  Vergil,®  of  course, 
recognizes  Alfenus'  position  as  commissioner  in  his 
ninth  Ecloguey  where  he  promises  him  great  glory  if 
he  will  show  mercy  to  Mantua: 

Vare,  tuum  nomen,  superet  modo  Mantua  nobis  •  .  . 
And  VergiPs  appeal  to  him  was  reasonable,  since  he, 

®  Servius  Dan,  on   EcL   IX.    10 ;   ex  oratione   Cornelii   in 
Alfenum.     Cf.  Kroll,  in  Rhein,  Museum^  1909,  52.1 
^  Servius  Dan,  on  EcL  VI.  6. 
®  Vergil,  Eclogue  IX,  26-29, 


fei 


II 


I      r 


126  VERGIL 

too,  was  a  man  of  literary  ambitions.^  But  there  is  ' 
no  proof  that  Alfenus  gave  ear  to  his  pleaj  at  any 
rate  the  poet  never  mentions  him  again.  Servius' 
supposition  that  Alfenus  had  been  of  service  to  the 
poet '°  seems  to  rest  wholly  on  the  mistaken  idea  that 
the  sixth  Eclogue  was  obsequiously  addressed  to  him. 
As  we  have  seen,  however,  Quintilius  Varus  has  a 
better  claim  to  that  poem. 

The  quotation  from  the  speech  of  Gallus  also 
lends  support  to  a  statement  in  Servius  that  Gallus 
had  been  assigned  to  the  duty  of  exacting  moneys 
lirop.  cities  which  escaped  confiscation.^^     For  this 
we  are  duly  grateful.    It  indicates  how  Alfenus  and 
Gallus  came  into  conflict  since  the  latter's  financial 
sphere  would  naturally  be  invaded  if  the  former 
seized  exempted  territory  for  the  extension  of  his 
new  colony  of  Cremona.    In  such  conditions  we  can 
realize  that  Gallus  was,  as  a  matter  of  course,  in-  / 
terested  in  saving  Mantua  from  confiscation,  and 
that  in  this  effort  he  may  well  have  appealed  to 
Octavian  in  VergiPs  behalf.     In  fact  his  interpre- 
tation of  the  three-mile  exemption  might  actually 
have  saved  VergiPs  properties,  which  seem  to  have 
lain  about  that  distance  from  the  city." 

^  See  Sufenus  and  Alfenus,   Classical  Quarterly,    1920,  p. 

12  t9"  ^^^T'""  ^^-  ^'  "  ^^^^'^'"^  ^^«-  o'^  ^^^.  VI.  64. 

Vita  Probiana,  milia  fassuum  XXX  is  usually  changed  to 
HI  on  the  basis  of  Donatus:  a  Mantua  non  frocul^ 


THE   EVICTIONS  127 

Again,  however,  there  is  little  reason  for  the  sup- 
position that  VergiPs  Eclogues  in  honor  of  Gallus 
have  any  reference  whatever  to  this  affair.  The 
sixth  followed  the  death  of  Siro,  and  the  tenth  seems 
to  precede  the  days  of  colonial  disturbances,  if  it 
has  reference  to  Gallus  as  a  soldier  in  Greece.  If 
the  sixth  Eclogue  refers  to  Siro,  as  Servius  holds, 
then  Vergil  and  Gallus  had  long  been  literary  asso- 
ciates before  the  first  and  ninth  were  written. 

The  student  of  *  Vergil  who  has  once  compared 
the  statements  of  the  scholiasts  with  the  historical 
facts  at  these  few  points,  where  they  run  parallel, 
will  have  little  patience  with  the  petty  gossip  which 
was  elicited  from  the  Eclogues.  The  story  of  Ver- 
giPs tiff  with  a  soldier,  for  example,  is  apparently 
an  inference  from  Menalcas'  experience  in  Eclogue 
IX.  iS'y  but  "Menalcas"  appears  in  four  other 
Eclogues  where  he  cannot  be  Vergil.  The  poet  in- 
deed was  at  Naples,  as  the  eighth  Catalefton  proves. 
The  estate  in  danger  is  not  his,  but  that  of  his 
father,  who  presumably  was  the  only  man  legally 
competent  of  action  in  case  of  eviction.  VergiPs 
poem,  to  be  sure,  is  a  plea  for  Mantua,  but  it  is 
clearly  a  plea  for  the  whole  town  and  not  for  his 
father  alone.  The  landmark  of  the  low  hills  and 
the  beeches  up  to  which  the  property  was  saved 
(IX. 8)  seems  to  be  the  limits  of  Mantua's  boun- 


||| 


fl 


1^1 


I    I 


128  VERGIL 

daries,  not  of  VergiPs  estates  on  the  low  river-plains. 
We  need  not  then  concern  ourselves  in  a  Vergilian 
biography  with  the  tale  that  Arrius  or  Clodius  or 
Claudius  oc  Milienus  Toro  chased  the  poet  into  a 
coal-bin  or  ducked  him  into  the  river."  The  shep- 
herds of  the  poem  are  typical  characters  made  to 
pass  through  the  typical  experiences  of  times  of 
distress. 

The  first  Ecloguey  Tityre  tUy  is  even  more  general 
than  the  ninth  in  its  application.     Though,  of  course, 
it  is  meant  to  convey  the  poet's  thanks  to  Octavian 
for  a  favorable  decree,  it  speaks  for  all  the  poor 
peasants  who  have  been  saved.     The  aged  slave, 
Tityrus,  does  not  represent  VergiPs  circumstances, 
but  rather  those  of  the  servile  shepherd-tenants,"  so 
numerous  in  Italy  at  this  time.     Such  men,  though 
renters,  could  not  legally  own  property,  since  they 
were  slaves.     But  in  practice  they  were  allowed  and 
even  encouraged  to  accumulate  possessions  in  the 
hope  that  they  might  some  day  buy  their  freedom, 
and  with  freedom  would  naturally  come  citizenship 
and   the   full   ownership   of   their  accumulations. 
Many  of  the  poor  peasants  scattered  through  Italy 
were  coloni  of  this  type  and  they  doubtless  suflFered 
severely  in  the  evictions.    Tityrus  is  here  pictured 

*'  See  Diehl,  Vttae  Vergilianae,  p.  58. 

7  \^''^}^\f^^^^'>  1903,  p.  I  flP,  questioned  by  Stampini, 
Le  Bucoltche^  1905,  p.  93. 


THE    EVICTIONS  129 

as  going  to  the  city  to  ask  for  his  liberty,  which 
would  in  turn  ensure  the  right  of  ownership.  Such 
is  the  allegory,  simple  and  logical.  It  is  only  the 
old  habit  of  confusing  Tityrus  with  Vergil  which 
has  obscured  the  meaning  of  the  poem.  However, 
the  real  purpose  of  the  poem  lies  in  the  second  part 
where  the  poet  expresses  his  sympathy  for  the  luck- 
less ones  that  are  being  driven  from  their  homes j 
and  that  this  represents  a  cry  of  the  whole  of  Italy  v 
and  not  alone  of  his  home  town  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  he  sets  the  characters  in  typical  shepherd 
country,^^  not  in  Mantuan  scenery  as  in  the  ninth. 
The  plaint  of  Meliboeus  for  those  who  must  leave 
their  homes  to  barbarians  and  migrate  to  Africa  and 
Britain  to  begin  life  again  is  so  poignant  that  one 
wonders  in  what  mood  Octavian  read  it.  "  En  quo 
discordia  cives  produxit  miseros !  "  was  not  very  flat- 
tering to  him. 

The  very  deep  sympathy  of  Vergil  for  the  poor 
exiles  rings  also  through  the  Dtrae^  a  very  sur- 
prising poem  which  he  wrote  at  this  same  time,  but 
on  second  thought  suppressed.  It  has  the  bitterness 
of  the  first  Eclogue  without  its  grace  and  tactful 
beginning.  The  triumvirs  were  in  no  mood  to  read 
a  book  of  lamentations.     "  Honey  on  the  rim  "  was 

*'  Capua  and  Nuceria  were  two  of  the  cities  near  Naples 
where  Vergil  could  see  the  work  of  eviction  near  at  hand.. 


•f 


i 


w 


>m 


II  ■  t^ 


130  VERGIL 

Lucretius'  wise  precept,  and  it  was  doubtless  a  pru- 
dent impulse  that  substituted  the  Eclogue  for  the 
"Curses."  The  former  probably  accomplished 
little  enough,  the  latter  would  not  even  have  been 
read. 

The  Dirae  takes  the  form  of  a  "  cursing  roundel," 
a  form  once  employed  by  Callimachus,  who  may 
have  inherited  it  from  the  East.  It  calls  down 
heaven's  wrath  upon  the  confiscated  lands  in  Ian-  ^ 
guage  as  bitter  as  ever  Mt.  Ebal  heard:  fire  and 
flood  over  the  crops,  blight  upon  the  fruit,  and  pes- 
tilence upon  the  heartless  barbarians  who  drive 
peaceful  peasants  into  exile. 

The  setting  is  once  more  that  of  the  country  about 
Naples,  of  the  Campanian  hills  and  the  sea  coast, 
not  that  of  Mantua.''  It  is  doubtless  the  miserable 
poor  of  Capua  and  Nuceria  that  Vergil  particularly 
has  in  mind.  The  singers  are  two  slave-shepherds 
departing  from  the  lands  of  a  master  who  has  been 
dispossessed.  The  poem  is  pervaded  by  a  strong 
note  of  pity  for  the  lovers  of  peace,  —  "  pii  cives  " 
shall  we  say  the  "  pacifists,"  —  who  had  been  pun- 
ished for  refusing  to  enlist  in  a  civil  war.  A 
sympathy  for  them  must  have  been  deep  in  the 
gentle  philosopher  of  the  garden: 

"  It  is  just  possible  that  "Lycurgus"  (1.  8)  who  is  spoken 
of  as  the  author  of  the  mischief  is  meant  for  Alfenus  Varus, 
who  boasted  of  his  knowledge  of  law.  Horace  lampoons  him 
as  Alfenus  vafcr. 


THE    EVICTIONS  131 

O  male  deuoti,  praetorum  crimina,  agelli  !  ^^ 
Tuque  inimica  pii  semper  discordia  ciuis. 
Exsul  ego  indemnatus  egens  mea  rura  reliqui, 
Miles  ut  accipiat  funesti  praemia  belli. 
Hinc  ego  de  tumulo  mea  rura  nouissima  uisam, 
Hinc  ibo  in  siluas:  obstabunt  iam  mihi  colles, 
Obstabunt  montes,  campos  audire  licebit.^® 

For  Vergil  there  was  henceforth  no  joy  in  war  or  f 
the  fruits  of  war.  His  devotion  to  Julius  Caesar  I 
had  been  unquestioned,  and  Octavian,  when  he 
proved  himself  a  worthy  successor  and  established 
peace,  inherited  that  devotion.  But  for  the  patriots 
who  had  fought  the  losing  battle  he  had  only  a  heart 
full  of  pity. 

Ne  pueri  ne  tanta  animis  adsuescite  bella, 
Neu  patriae  validos  in  viscera  vertite  viris; 
Tuque  prior,  tu  parce,  genus  qui  ducis  Olympo, 
Pro j  ice  tela  manu,  sanguis  meus! 

*^  Ye  fields  accursed  for  our  statesmen's  sins, 

O  Discord  ever  foe  to  men  of  peace, 

In  want,  an  exile,  uncondemned,  I  yield 

My  lands,  to  pay  the  wages  of  a  hell-born  war. 

Ere  I  go  hence,  one  last  look  towards  my  fields. 

Then  to  the  woods  I  turn  to  close  you  out 

From  view,  but  ye  shall  hear  my  curses  still. 
^*  The  Lydia  which  comes  in  the  MS.  attached  to  the 
^  Dirae  is  not  VergiPs.  Nor  can  it  be  the  famous  poem  of 
that  name  written  by  Valerius  Cato,  despite  the  opinion 
of  Lindsay,  Class,  Review^  191 8,  p.  62.  It  is  too  slight  and 
ineffectual  to  be  identified  with  that  work.  The  poem  abounds 
with  conceits  that  a  neurotic  and  sentimental  pupil  of  Propertius 
—  not  too  well  practiced  in  verse  writing  —  would  be  likely 
to  cull  from  his  master. 


>>i 


il 


m 


f  I 


I 


ii 


XII 
POLLIO 

We  come  finally  to  the  two  Eclogues  addressed   >/ 
to  Asinius  PoUio.     This  remarkable  man  was  only 
SIX  years  older  than  Vergil,  but  he  was  just  old  w 
enough  to  become  a  member  of  Caesar's  staff,  an 
experience  that  matured  men  quickly.     To  Vergil 
he  seemed  to  be  a  link  with  the  last  great  generation 
of  the  Republic.     That  Catullus  had  mentioned  him 
gracefully  in  a  poem,  and  Cinna  had  written  him  a 
fropemfticonj  that  Caesar  had  spoken  to  him  on  the  ^ 
[fateful  night  at  the  Rubicon,  and  that  he  had  been 
one  of  Cicero's  correspondents,  placed  him  on  a  very 
Ihigh  pedestal  in  the  eyes  of  the  studious  poet  still 
groping  his  way.     It  may  well  be  that  Gallus  was 
.  the  tie  that  connected  PoUio  and  Vergil,  for  we  find 
I  in  a  letter  of  PoUio's  to  Cicero  that  the  former  while 
campaigning  in  Spain  was  in  the  habit  of  exchanging 
literary  chitchat  with  Gallus.  That  was  in  the  spring 
of  43,  at  the  very  time  doubtless  when  PoUio  —  as 
young    men    then    did  —  spent    his    leisure    mo- 
ments between  battles  in  writing  tragedies.    Vergil  • 
n  his  eighth  Eclogue^  perhaps  with  over-generous  j 
•raise,  compares  these  plays  with  those  of  Sophocles. 

133 


POLLIO  133 

This  Eclogue  presents  one  of  the  most  striking 
studies  in  primitive  custom  that  Latin  poetry  has 
produced,  a  bit  of  realism  suffused  with  a  romantic 
pastoral  atmosphere.  The  first  shepherd's  song  is 
of  unrequited  love  cherished  from  boyhood  for  a 
maiden  who  has  now  chosen  a  worthless  rival.  The 
second  is  a  song  sung  while  a  deserted  shepherdess 
performs  with  scrupulous  precision  the  magic  rites 
which  are  to  bring  her  faithless  lover  back  to  her. 
There  are  reminiscences  of  Theocritus  of  course,  any 
edition  of  the  Eclogues  will  give  them  m  full,  but 
Vergil,  so  long  as  he  lived  at  Naples,  did  not  have 
to  go  to  Sicilian  books  for  these  details.  He  who 
knows  the  social  customs  of  Campania,  the  magical 
charms  scribbled  on  the  walls  of  Pompeii,  tlje  deadly 
curses  scratched  on  enduring  metal  by  forlorn  lovers, 
—  curses  hidden  beneath  the  threshold  or  hearth- 
stone of  the  rival  to  blight  her  cheeks  and  wrinkle 
her  silly  face, —  knows  very  well  that  suah  folks 
are  the  very  singers  that  Vergil  might  meet  in  his 
walks  about  the  hills  of  the  golden  bay. 

The  eighth  Eclogue  claims  to  have  been  written 
at  the  invitation  of  PoUio,  who  had  apparently 
learned  thus  early  that  Vergil  was  a  poet  worth  en- 
couraging. That  the  poem  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  confiscations,  in  so  far  at  least  as  we  are  able  to 
understand  the  historical  situation,  has  been  sug- 


/ 


I 


'    ft", 


i)i 


M  ^ 


'M 


f  , 


134  VERGIL 

gested  above.  It  is  usually  dated  in  the  year  of 
PoUio's  Albanian  campaign  in  39,  that  is  a  year  after 
his  consulship.  Should  it  not  rather  be  placed  two 
years  earlier  when  PoUio  had  given  up  the  Cisalpine 
province  and  withdrawn  to  the  upper  Adriatic  coast 
preparatory  to  proceeding  on  Antony's  orders  against 
the  lUyrian  rebels?  In  the  spring  of  41  PoUio 
camped  near  the  Timavus,  mentioned  in  line  65  two 
years  later  the  natural  route  for  him  to  take  from 
Rome  would  be  via  Brundisium  and  Dyrrhachium.^ 
The  point  is  of  little  interest  except  in  so  far  as  the 
date  of  the  poem  aids  us  in  tracing  PoUio's  influence 
upon  the  poet,  and  in  arranging  the  Eclogues  in  their 
chronological  sequence. 

Finally,  we  have  the  famous  "  Messianic '' 
Eclogue,  the  fourth,  which  was  addressed  to  Pollio 
during  his  consulship.  By  its  fortuitous  resemblance 
to  the  prophetic  literature  of  the  Bible,  it  came  at  one  j 
time  to  be  the  best  known  poem  in  Latin,  and  ele- 
vated its  author  to  the  position  of  an  arch-magician  ^ 
I  in  the  medieval  world.  Indeed,  this  poem  was 
llargely  influential  in  saving  the  rest  of  VergiPs  works 

\  ^  Antony's  province  did  not  extend  beyond  Scodra;  the  roads 
down  the  Illyrian  mountain  from  Trieste  were  not  easy  for 
an  army  to  travel ;  if  the  Eclogues  were  composed  in  three  years 
(Donatus)  the  year  39  is  too  late.  Finally,  Vellius,  II,  76.2, 
makes  it  plain  that  in  41  Pollio  remained  in  Venetia  contrary  to 
orders.  He  had  apparently  been  ordered  to  proceed  into 
Illyria  at  that  time^ 


/ 

POLLIO  135 

from  the  bblivion  to  which  the  dark  ages  consigned 
at  least  nifte-tenths  of  Latin  literature. 

The  poem  was  written  soon  after  the  peace  of 
Brundisium  —  in  the  consummation  of  which  Pollio 
had  had  a  large  share  —  when  all  of  Italy  was  exult- 
ing in  its  escape  from  another  impending  civil  war. 
Its  immediate  purpose  was  to  give  adequate  expres- 
sion to  this  joy  and  hope  at  once  in  an  abiding  record 
that  the  Romans  and  the  rulers  of  Rome  might  read 
and  not  forget.  Its  form  seems  to  have  been  con- 
ditioned largely  by  a  strange  allegorical  poem 
written  just  before  the  peace  by  a  still  unknown  poet. 
The  poet  was  Horace,  who  in  the  sixteenth  epode 
had  candidly  expressed  the  fears  of  Roman  republi- 
cans for  Rome's  capacity  to  survive.  Horace  had 
boldly  asked  the  question  whether  after  all  it  was 
not  the  duty  of  those  who  still  loved  liberty  to  aban- 
don the  land  of  endless  warfare,  and  found  a  new 
home  in  the  far  west  —  a  land  which  still  preserved 
the  simple  virtues  of  the  "  Golden  Age."  VergiPs 
enthusiasm  for  the  new  peace  expresses  itself  as  an 
answer  to  Horace: '  the  "  Golden  Age  "  need  not  be 
sought  for  elsewhere  j  in  the  new  era  of  peace  now 
inaugurated  by  Octavian  the  Virgin  Justice  shall  re- 
turn to  Italy  and  the  Golden  Age  shall  come  to  this 

*  Sellar,  Horace  and  the  Elegiac  Poets,  p.   123.     Ramsay, 
quoted  by  W.  Warde  Fowler,  VergiVs  Messianic  Eclogue,  p.  54, 


■I  Mf ' 


u 


m 


i 


136  VERGIL 

generation  on  Italian  soil.  Vergil,  however,  intro- 
duces a  new  "  messianic "  element  into  the  sym- 
bolism of  his  poem,  for  he  measures  the  progress  of 
the  new  era  by  the  stages  in  the  growth  of  a  child 
who  is  destined  finally  to  bring  the  prophecy  to  ful- 
fillment. This  happy  idea  may  well  have  been  sug- 
gested  by  table  talks  with  Philodemus  or  Siro,  who  ^ 
must  at  times  have  recalled  stories  of  savior-princes 
that  they  had  heard  in  their  youth  in  the  East.  The 
oppressed  Orient  was  full  of  prophetic  utterances 
promising  the  return  of  independence  and  prosperity 
under  the  leadership  of  some  long-hoped-for  worthy 
prince  of  the  tediously  unworthy  reigning  dynasties. 
Indeed,  since  Philodemus  grew  to  boyhood  at  Ga-  ^ 
dara  under  Jewish  rule  he  could  hardly  have  escaped 
the  knowledge  of  the  very  definite  Messianic  hopes 
of  the  Hebrew  people.  It  may  well  be,  therefore, 
that  a  stray  image  whose  ultimate  source  was  none 
other  than  Isaiah  came  in  this  indirect  fashion  into 
VergiPs  poem,  and  that  the  monks  of  the  dark  ages 
guessed  better  than  they  knew. 

To  attempt  to  identify  VergiPs  child  with  a 
definite  person  would  be  a  futile  effort  to  analyze 
poetic  allegory.  Contemporary  readers  doubtless  - 
supposed  that  since  the  Republic  was  dead,  the  suc- 
cessor to  power  after  the  death  of  Octavius  and 
Antony  would  naturally  be  a  son  of  one  of  these.    - 


POLLIO  137 

The  settlements  of  the  year  were  sealed  by  two  mar- 
riages, that  of  Octavian  to  Scribonia  and  that  of^ 
Octavian's  sister  to  Antony.  It  was  enough  that 
some  prince  worthy  of  leadership  could  naturally 
be  expected  from  these  dynastic  marriages,  and  that 
in  either  case  it  would  be  a  child  of  Octavian's 
house.^  Thus  far  his  readers  might  let  their  imag- 
ination range  J  what  actually  happened  afterwards 
through  a  series  of  evil  fortunes  has,  of  course,  noth- 
ing to  d6  with  the  question.  PoUio  is  obviously 
addressed  as  the  consul  whose  year  marked  the  peace 
which  all  the  world  hoped  and  prayed  would  be 
lasting. 

We  have  now  reviewed  the  circumstances  which 
called  forth  the  Eclogues.  They  seem,  as  Donatus 
says,  to  have  been  written  within  a  period  of  three 
years.  The  second,  third,  seventh  and  sixth  appar- 
ently fall  within  the  year  42,  the  tenth,  fifth,  eighth, 
ninth  and  first  in  the  year  41,  while  the  Pollio 
certainly  belongs  to  the  year  40,  when  Vergil  became 
thirty  years  of  age.  The  writing  of  these  poems 
had  called  the  poet  more  and  more  away  from  phil-  . 
osophy  and  brought  him  into  closer  touch  with  the 
sufferings  and  experiences  of  his  own  people.  He 
had  found  a  theme  after  his  own  heart,  and  with  , 
the  theme  had  come  a  style  and  expression  that  fitted  i 

•  See  Class,  Phil.  XI,  334,  '^ 


138  VERGIL 

his  genius.  He  abandoned  Hellenistic  conceits  with  ^ 
their  prettiness  of  sentiment,  attained  an  easy  modu- 
lation of  line  readily  responding  to  a  variety  of 
emotions,  learned  the  dignity  of  his  own  language 
as  he  acquired  a  deeper  sympathy  for  the  sufferings 
of  his  own  people.  There  is  a  new  note,  as  there 
is  a  new  rhythm  in: 

Magnus  ab  integro  saeclorum  nascitur  ordo. 


XIII 
THE  CIRCLE  OF  MAECENAS 

Julius  Caesar  had  learned  from  bitter  experience 
that  poets  were  dangerous  enemies.  Cicero's  innu- 
endoes were  disagreeable  enough  but  they  might 
be  forgotten.  When,  however,  Catullus  and  Calvus 
put  them  into  biting  epigrams  there  was  no  forget- 
ting. This  was  doubtless  Caesar's  chief  reason  for 
his  constant  endeavor  to  win  the  goodwill  of  the 
young  poets,  and  he  ultimately  did  win  that  of  Cal- 
vus and  Catullus.  Whether  Octavian,  and  his  sage 
adviser  Maecenas,  acted  from  the  same  motive  we 
do  not  know,  though  they  too  had  seen  in  Vergil's 
epigrams  on  Antony's  creatures,  and  in  Horace's 
sixteenth  epode  that  the  poets  of  the  new  generation 
seemed  likely  to  give  effective  expression  to  political 
sentiments.  At  any  rate,  the  new  court  at  Rome 
began  very  soon  to  make  generous  overtures  to  the 
literary  men  of  the  day. 

PoUio,  Octavian's  senior  by  many  years,  and 
of  noble  family,  could  hardly  be  approached. 
Though  gradually  drawing  away  from  Antony,  he 
had  so  closely  associated  himself  with  this  brilliant 
companion  of  his  Gallic-war  days,  that  he  preferred 

139 


\ 


140  VERGIL 

not  to  take  a  subordinate  place  at  the  Roman  court. 

Messalla,  who  had  entered  the  service  of  Antony, 

was  also  out  of  reach.     There  remained  the  brilliant 

circle  of  young  men  at  Naples,  men  whose  names 

4  occurred  in  the  dedications  of  Philodemus'  lectures: 

I  Vergil,  Varius,  Plotius  and  Quintilius  Varus,  three 

I  of  whom  at  least  were  from  the  north  and  would 

Inaturally  be  inclined  to  look  upon  Octavian  with 

'sympathy. 

Varius  had  already  written  his  epic  De  Morte 
|which  seems  to  have  mourned  Caesar's  death,  and, 
though  in  hidden  language,  he  had  alluded  bitterly 
|to  Antony's  usurpations  in  the  year  that  followed 
the  murder.  Before  Vergil's  epic  appeared  it  was 
Varius  who  was  always  considered  the  epic  poet  of 
the  group.  Of  Plotius  Tucca  we  know  little  except 
that  he  is  called  a  poet,  was  a  constant  member  of 
the  circle,  and  with  Varius  the  literary  executor  who 
published  Vergil's  works  after  his  death.  Quin- 
1  tilius  Varus  had,  like  Varius,  come  from  Cremona, 
known  Catullus  intimately,  and,  if  we  accept  the 
view  of  Servius  for  the  sixth  Eclogue,  had  been  Ver- 
gil's most  devoted  companion  in  Siro's  school.  He 
also  took  some  part  in  the  civil  wars,  and  came  to  be 
looked  upon  as  a  very  firm  supporter  of  sound  liter- 
ary standards.^  Horace's  Quis  desiderio,  shows 
that  Varus  was  one  of  Vergil's  most  devoted  friends.    ^ 

^  Cf.  Horace,  Ars  Poetical  440, 


THE   CIRCLE    OF   MAECENAS         141 

Vergil's  position  as  foremost  of  these  poets  was 
doubtless  established  by  the  publication  of  the 
Eclogues.  They  took  Rome  by  storm,  and  were 
even  set  to  music  and  sung  on  the  stage,  according 
to  an  Alexandrian  fashion  then  prevailing  in  the 
capital.  Octavian  was,  of  course,  attracted  to  them 
by  a  personal  interest.  The  poet  was  given  a  house 
in  Maecenas'  gardens  on  the  Esquiline  with  the  hope 
of  enticing  him  to  Rome.  Vergil  doubtless  spent 
some  time  in  the  city  before  he  turned  to  the  more 
serious  task  of  the  Georgics,  but  we  are  told  that  he 
preferred  the  Neapolitan  bay  and  established  his 
home  there.  This  group,  it  would  seem,  was  defi- 
nitely drawn  into  Octavian's  circle  soon  after  the 
peace  of  Brundisium,  and  formed  the  nucleus  of  a 
kind  of  literary  academy  that  set  the  standards  for 
the  Augustan  age. 

The  introduction  of  Horace  into  this  circle  makes 
an  interesting  story.  He  was  five  years  younger  than 
Vergil,  and  had  had  his  advanced  education  at 
Athens.  There  Brutus  found  him  in  43,  when 
attending  philosophical  lectures  in  order  to  hide  his 
political  intrigues  j  and  though  Horace  was  a  f reed- 
man's  son,  Brutus  gave  him  the  high  dignity  of  a 
military  tribuneship.  Brutus  as  a  Republican  was, 
of  course,  a  stickler  for  all  the  aristocratic  customs. 
That  he  conferred  upon  Horace  a  knight's  office 


/ 


f 


\ 


I 


I 


m 


ii 
II 


142  VERGIL 

probably  indicates  that  the  Uberttnus  'pater  had  been 
a  war  captive  rather  than  a  man  of  servile  stock,  and, 
therefore,  only  technically  a  "  freedman."  In  prac- 
tical life  the  Romans  observed  this  distinction,  even 
though  it  was  not  usually  feasible  to  do  so  in  political 
life.  After  Philippi  Horace  found  himself  with 
the  defeated  remnant  and  returned  to  Italy  only  to 
discover  that  his  property  had  been  confiscated.  He 
was  eager  for  a  career  in  literature,  but  having  to 
earn  his  bread,  he  bought  a  poor  clerkship  in  the  ^ 
treasury  office.  Then  during  spare  moments  he 
wrote  —  satires,  of  course.  What  else  could  such 
a  wreckage  of  enthusiasm  and  ambitions  produce? 

His  only  hope  lay  in  attracting  the  attention  of 
some  kindly  disposed  literary  man,  and  for  some 
reason  he  chose  Vergil.  The  Eclogues  were  not  yet 
out,  but  the  Culex  was  in  circulation,  and  he  made 
the  pastoral  scene  of  this  the  basis  of  an  epode  —  the 
second  —  written  with  no  little  good-natured 
humor.  Horace  imagines  a  broker  of  the  forum  yj 
reading  that  passage,  and,  quite  carried  away  by  the 
succession  of  delightful  scenes,  deciding  to  quit 
business  for  the  simple  life.  He  accordingly  draws 
in  all  his  moneys  on  the  Calends  —  on  the  Ides  he 
lends  them  out  again!  ^    What  Vergil  wrote  Horace 

*  Horace's  scenes  (his  memory  is  visual  rather  than  auditory) 
unmistakably  reproduce  those  of  the  Culex;  cf.  Culex  148— 
58  with  Efode  26-28;  Culex  86-7  with  Efode  21-22;  Culex 


THE   CIRCLE   OF   MAECENAS         143 

when  he  received  a  copy  of  the  Efode^  we  are  not 
told,  but  in  his  next  work,  the  Georgics,  he  returned 
the  compliment  by  similarly  threading  Horace's 
phrases  into  a  description  of  country  life  —  a  pas- 
sage that  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  successful  in  the 
book.' 

The  composition  of  the  sixteenth  epode  by  Horace 
—  soon  after  the  second,  it  would  seem  —  gave  Ver- 
gil an  opportunity  to  recognize  the  new  poet,  and 
answer  his  pessimistic  appeal  with  the  cheerful 
prophecy  of  the  fourth  Eclogue,  as  we  have  seen. 
By  this  time  we  may  suppose  that  an  intimate  friend- 
ship had  sprung  up  between  the  two  poets, 
strengthened  of  course  by  friendly  intercourse,  now 
that  Vergil  could  spend  some  of  his  time  at  Rome. 
Horace  himself  tells  how  Vergil  and  Varius  intro- 
duced him  to  Maecenas  (Sat.  I.  6),  an  important 
event  in  his  career  that  took  place  some  time  before 
the  Brundisian  journey  (Sat.  I.  5).  Maecenas 
had  hesitated  somewhat  before  accepting  the  in- 
timacy of  the  young  satirist:  Horace  had  fought 
quite  recently  in  the  enemy's  army,  had  criti- 
cized the  government  in  his  Epodes,  and  was  of 


49-50  with  Efode  11-12;  etc.  A  full  comparison  is  made 
in  Classical  Philologyy  1920,  p.  24.  Vergil  could,  of  course,  be 
expected  to  recognize  the  allusions  to  his  own  poem. 

®  See   Georgics,   II,    458-542,   and   a   discussion   of   it   in 
Classical  Philology,  1920,  p.  42. 


i 


I 


1 


it 


I,  ^ 


144  VERGIL 

a  class  —  at  least  technically  —  which  Octavian  had 
been  warned  not  to  recognize  socially,  unless  he  was 
prepared  to  oflFend  the  old  nobility.  But  Horace's 
dignified  candor  won  him  the  confidence  of 
Maecenas 5  and  that  there  might  be  no  misunder- 
standing he  included  in  his  first  book  of  Satires  a 
simple  account  of  what  he  was  and  hoped  to  be. 
Thus  through  the  eflForts  of  Vergil  and  Varius  he 
entered  the  circle  whose  guiding  spirit  he  was 
destined  to  become. 

Thus  the  coterie  was  formed,  which  under  such 
powerful  patronage  was  bound  to  become  a  sort  of 
unofficial  commission  for  the  regulation  of  literary 
standards.  It  was  an  important  question,  not  only 
for  the  young  men  themselves  but  for  the  future  of 
Ronian  literature,  which  direction  this  group  would 
take  and  whose  influence  would  predominate.  It 
might  be  Maecenas,  the  holder  of  the  purse-strings, 
a  man  who  could  not  check  his  ambition  to  express 
himself  whether  in  prose  or  verse.  This  Etrus- 
can, whose  few  surviving  pages  reveal  the  fact  that 
he  never  acquired  an  understanding  of  the  dignity 
of  Rome's  language,  that  he  was  temperamentally 
un-Roman  in  his  love  for  meretricious  gaudiness  and 
prettiness,  might  have  worked  incalculable  harm  on 
this  school  had  his  taste  in  the  least  affected  it.  But 
whether  he  withheld  his  dictum,  or  it  was  disre- 


'* 


THE   CIRCLE   OF    MAECENAS         145 

garded  by  the  others,  no  influence  of  his  can  be  de- 
tected in  the  literature  of  the  epoch. 

ApoUodorus,  Octavian's  aged  teacher,  a  man  of 
very  great  personal  influence,  and  highly  respected, 
probably  counted  for  more.  In  his  lectures  and  his 
books,  one  of  which,  Valgius,  a  member  of  the  circle, 
translated  into  Latin,  he  preached  the  doctrines  of 
a  chaste  and  dignified  classicism.  His  creed  for- 
tunately fell  in  with  the  tendencies  of  the  time,  and 
whether  this  teaching  be  called  a  cause,  or  whether 
the  popularity  of  it  be  an  efiFect  of  pre-existing 
causes,  we  know  that  this  man  came  to  represent 
many  of  the  ideals  of  the  school. 

But  to  trace  these  ideals  in  their  contact  with  Ver- 
gil's mental  development,  we  must  look  back  for  a 
moment  to  the  tendencies  of  the  CatuUan  age  from 
which  he  was  emerging.  In  a  curious  passage  written 
not  many  years  after  this,  Horace,  when  grouping 
the  poets  according  to  their  styles  and  departments,* 
places  Vergil  in  a  class  apart.  He  mentions  first  a 
turgid  epic  poet  for  whom  he  has  no  regard.  Then 
there  are  Varius  and  PoUio,  in  epic  and  tragedy 
respectively,  of  whose  forceful  directness  he  does 
approve.  In  comedy,  his  friend,  Fundanius,  repre- 
sents a  homely  plainness  which  he  commends,  while 
Vergil  stands  for  gentleness  and  urbanity  (molle 
atque  facetum). 

*  Sat,  I.  10,  40  ff. 


I 

I 

I 


\ 


■'W 


m 


146  VERGIL 

The  passage  is  important  not  only  because  it  re- 
veals a  contemporaneous  view  of  VergiPs  position 
but  because  it  shows  Horace  thus  early  as  the  spokes- 
man of  the  "  classical  '*  coterie,  the  tenets  of  which 
in  the  end  prevailed.     In  this  passage  Horace  em- 
ploys the  categories  of  the  standard  text-books  of 
rhetoric  of  that  day®  which  were  accustomed  to 
classify  styles  into  four  types:  (i)  Grand  and  ornate, 
(2)  grand  but  austere,  (3)  plain  and  austere,  (4) 
plain  but  graceful.    The  first  two  styles  might  ob- 
viously be  used  in  forensic  prose  or  in  ambitious 
poetic  work  like  epics  and  tragedies.    Horace  would 
clearly  reject  the  former,  represented  for  instance  by 
Hortensius  and  Pacuvius,  in  favor  of  the  austere 
dignity  and  force  of  the  second,  affected  by  men 
like  Cornificius  in  prose  and  Varius  and  PoUio  in 
verse.     The  two  types  of  the  "  plain  "  style  were 
employed  in  more  modest  poems  of  literature,  both 
in  prose  and  in  such  poetry  as  comedy,  the  epyllion, 
in  pastoral  verse,  and  the  like.     Severe  simplicity 
was  favored  by  Calvus  in  his  orations,  Catullus  in 
his  lyrics  j   while  a  more  polished  and  well-nigh 
frecieuse  plainness  was  illustrated  in  the  speeches  of 
Calidius  and  in  the  Alexandrian  epyllion  of  Catullus' 
Peleus  and  Thetis  and  in  VergiPs  Ciris  and  Bucolics. 

'  E.  g.  Demetrius,  Philodemus,  Cicero;  cf.  Class.  Phil.  1920, 
p.  230. 


1 1 


THE   CIRCLE   OF    MAECENAS  147 

In  choosing  between  these  two,  Horace,  of  course, 
sympathizes  with  the  ideals  of  the  severe  and  chaste 
style,  which  he  finds  in  the  comedies  of  Fundanius. 
VergiPs  early  work,  unambitious  and  "  plain " 
though  it  is,  falls,  of  course,  into  the  last  group;  and 
though  Horace  recognizes  his  type  with  a  friendly 
remark,  one  feels  that  he  recognizes  it  for  reasons 
of  friendship,  rather  than  because  of  any  native 
sympathy  for  it.  By  his  juxtaposition  he  shows  that 
the  classical  ideals  of  the  second  and  third  of  the 
four  "styles  "  are  to  him  most  sympathetic.  Molli- 
tudo  does  not  find  favor  in  any  of  his  own  work, 
or  in  his  criticism  of  other  men's  work.  Vergil, 
therefore,  though  he  appears  in  this  Augustan  coterie 
as  an  important  member,  is  still  felt  to  be  some- 
thing of  a  free  lance  who  adheres  to  Alexandrian 
art  *  not  wholly  in  accord  with  the  standards  which 
are  now  being  formulated.  If  Horace  had  obeyed 
his  literary  instincts  alone  he  would  probably  have 
relegated  Vergil  at  this  period  to  the  silence  he 
accorded  Gallus  and  Propertius  if  not  to  the  open 
hostility  he  expressed  towards  the  Alexandrianism 
of  Catullus.  It  is  significant  of  VergiPs  breadth 
of  sympathy  that  he  remitted  not  a  jot  in  his  devo- 
tion to  Catullus  and  Gallus  and  that  he  won  the  deep 

®  Horace  had  doubtless  seen  not  only  the  Culex  but  several 
of  the  other  minor  works  that  Vergil  never  deigned  to  put  into 
general  circulation. 


Mii«Mi 


\l'V 


I 


V  ■■  l"1 


148  VERGIL 

reverence  of  Propertius  while  remaining  the  friend 
and  companion  of  the  courtly  group  working  to- 
wards a  stricter  classicism.     If  we  may  attempt  to 
classify  the  early  Augustans,  we  find  them  align- 
ing themselves  thus.     The  strict  classicists  are  Hor-  (^ 
ace  the  satirist,  Varius  a  writer  of  epics,  PoUio  of 
tragedy 3  while  Varus,  Valgius,  Plotius,  and  Fun- 
danius,  though  less  productive,  employ  their  influ-  ^ 
ence  in  the  support  of  this  tendency  as  does  Tibullus    ^ 
somewhat  later.     Vergil  is  a  close  personal  friend 
of  these  men  but  refuses  to  accept  the  axioms  of  any 
one  school  i  Gallus,  his  friend,  is  a  free  romanticist, 
and  is  followed  in  this  tendency  a  few  years  latere 
by  Propertius. 

The  influences  that  made  for  classicism  were 
many.  Apollodorus,  the  teacher  of  Octavian,  must] 
have  been  a  strong  factor,  but  since  his  work  has 
been  lost,  the  weight  of  it  cannot  now  be  estimated. 
Horace  imbibed  his  love  for  severe  ideals  in  Athens, 
of  course.  There  his  teachers  were  Stoic  rhetori- 
cians who  trained  him  in  an  uncompromising  respect 
for  stylistic  rules.^  He  read  the  Hellenistic  poets, 
to  be  sure,  and  reveals  in  his  poems  a  ready  mem- 
ory of  them,  but  it  was  the  great  epoch  of  Greek 

^  For  the  stylistic  tenets  of  the  Stoic  teachers  see  Fiske, 
Lucilius  and  Horace^  pp.  64-143.  Apollodorus  seems  to  be  the 
rhetorician  whom  Horace  calls  Heliodorus  in  Sai,  I,  5,  see 
Class,  PhU.  1920,  393. 


THE   CIRCLE   OF    MAECENAS  149 

poetry  that  formed  his  style.  Such  are  the  foreign 
influences.  But  the  native  Roman  factors  must  not 
be  forgotten.  In  point  of  fact  it  was  the  classicistic 
Catullus  and  Calvus,  of  the  simple,  limpid  lyrics, 
written  in  pure  unalloyed  every-day  Latin,  that 
taught  the  new  generation  to  reject  the  later  Hel- 
lenistic style  of  Catullus  and  Calvus  as  illustrated 
in  the  verse  romances.  Varus,  PoUio,  and  Varius 
were  old  enough  to  know  Catullus  and  Calvus  per- 
sonally, to  remember  the  days  when  poems  like 
Dianae  sumus  in  fide  were  just  issued,  and  they 
were  poets  who  could  value  the  perfect  art  of  such 
work  even  after  the  authors  of  them  had  been  en- 
ticed by  ambition  into  dangerous  by-paths.  In  a 
word,  it  was  Catullus  and  Calvus,  the  lyric  poets^ 
who  made  it  possible  for  the  next  generation  to  re- 
ject Catullus  and  Calvus  the  neoteric  romancers. 

For  the  modem,  therefore,  it  is  difficult  to  re- 
strain a  just  resentment  when  he  finds  Horace  re- 
ferring to  these  two  great  predecessors  with  a  sneer. 
Yet  we  can,  if  we  will,  detect  an  adequate 
explanation  of  Horace's  attitude.  Very  few  poets 
of  any  time  have  been  able  to  capture  and  hold  the 
generation  immediately  succeeding.  The  stronger 
the  impression  made  by  a  genius,  the  farther  away 
is  the  pendulum  of  approbation  apt  to  swing.  The 
neoteroi  had  to  face,  in  addition  to  this  revulsion, ' 


i\ 


H 


I 


Wi 


m 


*hi 


150  VERGIL 

the  misfortunes  of  the  time.    The  civil  wars  which 
came  close  upon  them  had  little  use  for  the  senti- 
mentality of  their  romances  or  the  involutions  of 
their  mamier  of  composition.     And  again,  Catullus  1 
and  Calvus  had  been  over-brutal  in  their  attacks  j 
upon  Julius  Caesar,  a  character  lifted  to  the  high/ 
heavens  by  the  war  and  the  martyrdom  that  f ol4l 
lowed.     And,  as  fortune  would  have  it,  almost  all] 
of  the  new  literary  men  were,  as  we  have  seen,  pe-l 
culiarly  devoted  to  Caesar.     We  know  enough  of] 
wars  to  have  discovered  that  intense  partizanship 
does  silence  literary  judgment  except  in  the  case 
of  a  very  few  men  of  unusual  balance.     Vergil  was 
one  of  the  very  fewj  he  kept  his  candle  lit  at  the 
shrine  of  Catullus  still,  but  this  was  hardly  to  be 
expected  of  the  rest. 

In  prose  also  the  Augustans  upheld  the  refined 
and  chaste  work  of  classical  Atticism,  an  ideal  which 
they  derived  from  the  Romans  of  the  preceding 
generation  rather  than  from  teachers  like  ApoUo- 
dorus.  PoUio  and  Messalla  are  now  the  foremost  • 
orators.  PoUio  had  stood  close  to  Calvus  as  well 
as  to  Caesar,  and  had  witnessed  the  revulsion  of 
feeling  against  Cicero's  style  which  continued  to  - 
move  in  its  old  leisurely  course  even  after  the  civil 
war  had  quickened  men's  pulses.  Messalla  may 
have  been  influenced  by  the  example  of  his  general. 


THE   CIRCLE   OF   MAECENAS         151 

Brutus,  a  man  who  never  wasted  words  (so  long  as 
he  kept  his  temper).  Messalla  and  PoUio  were 
the  dictators  of  prose  style  during  this  period. 

We  find  Vergil,  therefore,  in  a  peculiar  position. 
He  was  still  recognized  as  a  pupil  of  Catullus  and 
the  Alexandrians  at  a  time  when  the  pendulum  was 
swinging  so  violently  away  from  the  republican 
poets  that  they  did  not  even  get  credit  for  the 
lessons  that  they  had  so  well  taught  the  new  gener- 
ation.    Vergil  himself  was  in  each  new  work  drift- 
ing more  and  morfe  toward  classicism,  but  he  con- 
tinued to  the  last  to  honor  Catullus  and  Calvus, 
Cinna  and  Cornificius,  and  his  friend  Gallus,  in 
complimentary  imitation  or  by  friendly  mention. 
The  new  Academy  was  proud  to  claim  him  as  a 
member,  though  it  doubtless  knew  that  Vergil  was   j 
too  great  to  be  bound  by  rul:es.       To  after  ages,   1 
while  Horace  has  come  to  stand  as  an  extremist  who  I 
carried  the  law  beyond  the  spirit,  Vergil,  honoring*  I 
the  past  and  welcoming  the  future,  has  assumed  the    1  • 
position  of  Rome's  most  representative  poet.  J 


«'  i 


&i 


Mi 


XIV 
THE  "GEORGICS" 

The  years  that  followed  the  publication  of  the 
Eclogues  seem  to  have  been  a  season  of  reading, 
traveling,  observing,  and  brooding.  Maecenas  de- 
sired to  keep  the  poet  at  Rome,  and  as  an  induce-  " 
ment  provided  him  with  a  villa  in  his  own  gardens 
on  the  Esquiline.  The  fame  of  the  digitus 
fraetereuntium  awaited  his  coming  and  going,  his 
Bucolics  had  been  set  to  music  and  sung  in  the  con- 
cert halls  to  vehement  applause.^  He  seems  even 
to  have  made  an  effort  to  be  socially  congenial. 
There  is  intimate  knowledge  of  courtly  customs  in 
the  staging  of  his  epicj  and  in  Horace's  fourth  book 
a  refurbished  early  poem  in  Philodemus'  manner 
pictures  a  Vergil  —  apparently  the  poet  —  as  the 
pet  of  the  fashionable  world.  But  these  things  had  ^ 
no  attraction  for  him.  Rome  indeed  appealed  to 
his  imagination,  Roma  fulckerrima  rerum^  but  it 

^  Tacitus,  Dialogusy  13:  Malo  securum  et  quietum  Vergilii 
secessum,  in  quo  tamen  neque  apud  divum  Augustum  gratia 
caruit  neque  apiid  populum  Romanum  notitia.  Testes  Augusti 
epistulae,  testis  ipse  populus,  qui  auditis  in  theatro  Vergilii 
versibus  surrexit  universus  et  forte  praesentem  spectantemque 
Vergiliuin^veneratus  est  qiiasi  Augustum. 

isa 


THE   "GEORGICS"  .       153 

was  the  invisible  Rome  rather  than  the  fumum  et 
ofes  streptumque,  it  was  the  city  of  pristine  ideals, 
of  irresistible  potency,  of  Anchises'  pageant  of 
heroes.  When  he  walked  through  the  Forum  he 
saw  not  only  the  glistening  monuments  in  their  new 
marble  veneer,  but  beyond  these,  in  the  far  distant 
past,  the  straw  hut  of  Romulus  and  the  sacred  grove 
on  the  Capitoline  where  the  spirit  of  Jove  had 
guarded  a  folk  of  simpler  piety.^  And  down  the 
centuries  he  beheld  the  heroes,  the  law-givers,  and 
the  rulers,  who  had  made  the  Forum  the  court  of 
a  world-wide  empire.  The  Rome  of  his  own  day 
was  too  feverish,  it  soon  drove  him  back  to  his  gar- 
den villa  near  Naples. 

It  was  well  that  he  possessed  such  a  retreat  dur- 
ing those  years  of  petty  political  squabbles.  The 
capital  still  hummed  with  rumors  of  civil  war. 
Antony  seemed  determined  to  sever  the  eastern 
provinces  from  the  empire  and  make  of  them  a  gift 
to  Cleopatra  and  her  children  —  a  mad  course  that 
could  only  end  in  another  world  war.  Sextus  Pom- 
pey  still  held  Sicily  and  the  central  seas,  ready  to 
betray  the  state  at  the  first  mis-step  on  Octavian's 
part.  At  Rome  itself  were  many  citizens  in  high 
position  who  were  at  variance  with  the  government, 
quite  prepared  to  declare  for  Antony  or  Pompey 


I 


154  VERGIL 

if  either  should  appear  a  match  for  the  young  heir 
of  Caesar.     Clearly  the  great  epic  of  Rome  could 
not  have  matured  in  that  atmosphere  of  suspicion, 
intrigue,  and  selfishness.     The  convulsions  of  the. 
dying  republic,  beheld  day  by  day  near  at  hand, 
could  only  have  inspired  a  disgust  sufficient  to  poison 
a  poet's  sensitive  hope.     It  was  indeed  fortunate 
that  Vergil  could  escape  all  this,  that  he  could  re- 
tain through  the  period  of  transition  the  memories 
of  Rome's  former  greatness  and  the  faith  in  her 
destiny  that  he  had  imbibed  in  his  youth.     The 
time  came  when  Octavian,  after  Actium,  reunited 
the  Empire  with  a  firm  hand  and  justified  the  buoy- 
ant optimism  which  Vergil,  almost  alone  of  his  gen- 
eration, had  been  able  to  preserve. 

During  these  few  years  Vergil  seems  to  have 
written  but  little.  We  have,  however,  a  strange 
poem  of  thirty-eight  lines,  the  Copa,  which,  to 
judge  from  its  exclusion  from  the  Catdepton, 
should  perhaps  be  assigned  to  this  period.  A  study 
in  tempered  realism,  not  unlike  the  eighth  Eclogue, 
it  gives  us  the  song  of  a  Syrian  tavern-maid  inviting 
wayfarers  into  her  inn  from  the  hot  and  dusty  road. 
The  spirit  is  admirably  reproduced  in  Kirby  Smith's 
rollicking  translation:^ 

»  See  Kirby  Flower  Smith,  Martial,  the  Efigramnmtist  and 
Other  Essays  Johns  Hopkins  Press,  ,920,  p.  fyo.  The  attri- 
bution  of  the  poem  to  Vergil  by  the  andents  as  well  as  by 


THE   "GEORGICS" 


155 


'Twas   at   a   smoke-stained   tavern,   and   she,   the   hostess 

there  — 
A  wine-flushed  Syrian  damsel,  a  turban  on  her  hair  — 
Beat  out  a  husky  tempo  from  reeds  in  either  hand, 
And  danced  —  the  dainty  wanton  —  an  Ionian  saraband. 
"  'Tis  hot,"  she  sang,  "  and  dusty;  nay,  travelers,  whither 

bound  ? 
Bide  here  and  tip  a  beaker  —  till  all  the  world  goes  round; 
Bide  here  and  have  for  asking  wine-pitchers,  music,  flowers, 
Green  pergolas,  fair  gardens,  cool  coverts,  leafy  bowers. 
In  our  Arcadian  grotto  we  have  someone  to  play 
On  Pan-pipes,  shepherd  fashion,  sweet  music  all  the  day. 
We  broached  a  cask  but  lately;  our  busy  little  stream 
Will  gurgle  softly  near  you  the  while  you  drink  and 

dream. 
Chaplets  of  yellow  violets  a-plenty  you  shall  find. 
And  glorious  crimson  roses  in  garlands  intertwined; 
And   baskets  heaped  with   lilies   the   water  nymph  shall 

bring  — 
White  lilies  that  this  morning  were  mirrored  in  her  spring. 
Here's  cheese  new  pressed  in  rushes  for  everyone  who 

comes, 
And,  lo,  Pomona  sends  us  her  choicest  golden  plums. 
Red  mulberries  await  you,  late  purple  grapes  withal, 
Dark  melons  cased  in  rushes  against  the  garden  wall, 
Brown  chestnuts,  ruddy  apples.     Divinities  bide  here. 
Fair  Ceres,  Cupid,  Bacchus,  those  gods  of  all  good  cheer, 
Priapus  too  —  quite  harmless,  though  terrible  to  see  — 
Our  little  hardwood  warden  with  scythe  of  trusty  tree. 


the  manuscripts,  and  the  style  of  its  fanciful  realism  so  patent 
in  much  of  Vergil's  work  place  the  poem  in  the  authentic  list. 
Rand,  Young  VirgiPs  Poetry,  Harvard  Studies,  1 91 9,  p.  174. 
has  well  summed  up  the  arguments  regarding  the  authorship 
of  the  poem^ 


> 


I 


f 


', 


is 


\' 


u 


156  VERGIL 

Ho,  friar  with  the  donkey,  turn  in  and  be  our  guest! 
Your  donkey  —  Vesta's  darh'ng  — is  weary;  let  him  rest. 
In  every  tree  the  locusts  their  shrilling  still  renew, 
And  cool  beneath  the  brambles  the  lizard  lies  perdu. 
So  test  our  summer-tankards,  deep  draughts  for  thirsty 
men; 

Then  fill  our  crystal  goblets,  and  souse  yourself  again. 
Come,  handsome  boy,  you're  weary!      'Twere  best  for 

you  to  twine 
Your  heavy  head  with  roses  and  rest  beneath  our  vine. 
Where  dainty  arms  expect  you  and  fragrant  lips  invite; 
Oh,  hang  the  strait-laced  model  that  plays  the  anchorite! 
Sweet  garlands  for  cold  ashes  why  should  you  care  to 

save? 

Or  would  you  rather  keep  them  to  lay  upon  your  grave? 
Nay,  drink  and  shake  the  dice-box.     Tomorrow's  care 
begone ! 

Death  plucks  your  sleeve  and  whispers:  *  Live  now,  I  come 


anon. 


> » 


/" 


Memories  of  the  Neapolitan  bay!  The  Copa  should 
be  read  in  the  arbor  of  an  osieria  at  Sorrento  or  Ca- 
pri to  the  rhythm  of  the  tarantella  where  the  modem 
offspring  of  VergiPs  tavern-maid  are  still  plying 
the  arts  of  song  and  dance  upon  the  passerby.* 

*  Unfortunately  the  evidence  does  not  suffice  to  assign  the 
Moretum  to  Vergil,  though  it  was  certainly  composed  by  a 
genuine  if  somewhat  halting  poet,  and  in  VergiPs  day.  It 
has  many  imaginative  phrases,  and  the  meticulous  exactness  of 
Its  mmiature  work  might  seem  to  be  Vergilian  were  it  not  for 
the  unrelieved  plainness  of  the  theme.  Even  so,  it  might  be 
considered  an  experiment  in  a  new  style,  if  the  rather  dubious 
manuscript  evidence  were  supported  by  a  single  ancient  citation. 
See  Randy  loc,  cU,  p.  178. 


THE   "GEORGICS"  157 

There  are  also  three  brief  Priapea  which  should 
probably  be  assigned  to  this  period.  The  third  may 
indeed  have  been  an  inscription  on  a  pedestal  of  the 
scare-crow  god  set  out  to  keep  off  thieving  rooks 
and  urchins  in  the  poet's  own  garden: 

This  place,  my  lads,  I  prosper,  I  guard  the  hovel,  too, 
Thatched,  as  you  see,  by  willows  and  reeds  and  grass  that 

grew 
In  all  the  marsh  about  it;  hence  me,  mere  stump  of  oak, 
Shaped  by  the  farmer's  hatchet,  they  now  as  god  invoke. 
They  bring  me  gifts  devoutly,  the  master  and  his  boy, 
Supposing  me  the  giver  of  the  blessings  they  enjoy. 
The  kind  old  man  each  morning  comes  here  to  weed  the 

ground, 
He  clears  the  shrine  of  thistles  and  burrs  that  grow  around. 
The  lad  brings  dainty  offerings  with  small  but  ready  hand: 
At  dawn  of  spring  he  crowns  me  with  a  lavish  daisy-strand, 
From  summer's  earliest  harvest,  while  still  the  stalk  is 

green, 
He  wreathes  my  brow  with  chaplets;  he  fills  me  baskets 

clean 
With  golden  pansies,  poppies,  with  apples  ripe  and  gourds, 
The  first  rich  blushing  clusters  of  grapes  for  me  he  hoards. 
And  once  to  my  great  honor  —  but  let  no  god  be  told!  — 
He  brought  me  to  my  altar  a  lambkin  from  the  fold. 
So  though,  my  lads,  a  Scare-Crow  and  no  true  god  I  be, 
My  master  and  his  vineyard  are  very  dear  to  me. 
Keep  off  your  filching  hands,  lads,  and  elsewhere  ply  your 

theft: 
Our  neighbor  is  a  miser,  his  Scare-Crow  gets  no  gifts. 
His  apples  are  not  guarded  —  the  path  is  on  your  left. 


1 

•%'  'I 


9'ii 


'i 


I 


158  VERGIL 

The  quaint  simplicity  of  the  sentiment  and  the  play- 
ful surprise  at  the  end  quickly  disarm  any 
skepticism  that  would  deny  these  lines  to  Horace's 
poet  of  "  tender  humor.'' 

During  this  period  the  poet  seems  also  to  have 
traveled.     Maecenas  enjoyed  the  society  of  liter- 
ary men,  and  we  may  well  suppose  that  he  took 
Vergil  with  him  in  his  administrative  tours  on  more 
than  the  one  occasion  which  Horace  happens  to  have 
recorded.     The  poet  certainly  knows  Italy  remark- 
ably well.     The  meager  and  inaccurate  maps  and 
geographical  works  of  that  day  could  not  have  pro- 
vided him  with  the  insight  into  details  which  thej-* 
Georgics  and  the  last  six  books  of  the  Aeneld  reveal.  ^ ' 
We  know,  of  course,  from  Horace's  third  ode  that! 
Vergil   went   to   Greece.     This   famous   poem,   aV 
"  steamer-letter  "  as  it  were,  is  undated,  but  it  may 
well  be  a  continuation  of  the   Brundisian  diary. 
The  strange  turn  which  the  poem  takes  —  its  dread 
of  the  sea's  dangers  —  seems  to  point  to  a  time 
when  Horace's  memories  of  his  own  shipwreck  were 
still  very  vivid. 

There  was  also  time  for  extensive  reading.  That 
Vergil  ranged  widely  and  deeply  in  philosophy  and 
history,  antiquities  and  all  the  world's  best  prose 
and  poetry,  the  vast  learning  of  the  Georgics  and 
the  Aeneid  abundantly  proves.  The  epic  story  which 


THE   "GEORGICS 


» 


159 


he  had  early  plotted  out  must  have  lain  very  near 
the  threshold  of  his  consciousness  through  this 
period,  for  his  mind  kept  seizing  upon  and  storing 
up  apposite  incidents  and  germs  of  fruitful  lore. 
References  to  Aeneas  crop  out  here  and  there  in  the 
GeorgicSy  and  the  mysterious  address  to  Mantua  in 
the  third  book  promises,  under  allusive  metaphors, 
an  epic  of  Trojan  heroes.  Nor  could  the  poet  for- 
get the  philosophic  work  he  had  so  long  pondered 
over.  Doubts  increased,  however,  of  his  capacity 
to  justify  himself  after  the  sure  success  of  Lucretius. 
A  remarkable  confession  in  the  second  book  of  the 
Georgics  reveals  his  conviction  that  in  this  poem  he 
had,  through  lack  of  confidence,  chosen  the  inferior 
theme  of  nature's  physical  and  sensuous  appeal 
when  he  would  far  rather  have  experienced  the 
intellectual  joy  of  penetrating  into  nature's  inner 
mysteries.** 

Though  we  need  not  take  too  literally  a  poet's 
pref  atorial  remarks,  Vergil  doubtless  hoped  that  his 

°  Me  vero  primum  dukes  ante  omnia  Musae, 
Quarum  sacra  fero  ingenti  percussus  amore, 
Accipiant,  caelique  vias  et  sidera  monstrent  — 
Sin,  has  ne  possim  naturae  accedere  partes, 
Frigidus  obstiterit  circum  praecordia  sangms, 
Rura  mihi  et  rigui  placeant  in  vallibus  amnes. 

Georgics,  II.  475.  ff. 

Was  this  striking  afologia  of  the  Georgics  forced  upon  Vergil 
by  the  fact  that  in  the  Aetna,  264-74,  he  had  pronounced 
peasant-lore  trivial  in  comparison  with  science? 


I 


mn 
iiii- 


■\ 


!•( 


1! 


m 


160  VERGIL 

Georgics  might   turn  men's   thoughts  towards  a 
serious  effort  at  rehabilitating  agriculture,  and  the 
practical-minded  Maecenas  certainly  encouraged  the 
work  with  some  such  aim    in  view.    The  govern- 
ment might  well  be  deeply  concerned.     The  vet- 
erans who  had  recently  settled  many  of  Italy's  best 
tracts  could  not  have  been  skilled  farmers.    The 
very  fact  that  the  lands  were  given  them  for  politi- 
cal services  could  only  have  suggested  to  the  shrewd 
among  them  that  the  old  Roman  respect  for  prop- 
erty rights  had  been  infringed,  and  that  it  was  wise 
to  sell  as  soon  as  possible  and  depart  with  some 
tangible  gain  before  another  revolution  resulted  in 
a  new  redistribution.     Such  suspicions  could  hardly 
beget  the  patience  essential  for  the  development  of 
agriculture.     And  yet  this  was  the  very  time  when 
farming  must  be  encouraged.     Large  parts  of  the 
arable  land  had  been  abandoned  to  grazing  during 
the  preceding  century  because  of  the  importation 
of  the  provincial  stipendiary  grain,  and  Italy  had 
lost  the  custom  of  raising  the  amount  of  food  that 
her  population  required.     As  a  result,  the  younger 
Pompey's  control  of  Sicily  and  the  trade  routes  had 
now  brought  on  a  series  of  famines  and  consequent 
bread-riots.     Year  after  year  Octavian  failed  in  his 
attempts  to  lure  away  or  to  defeat  this  obnoxious 
rebel.    At  best  he  could  buy  him  off  for  a  while, 


iit 


THE   "GEORGICS"  161 

though  he  never  knew  at  what  season  of  scardty 
the  purchase  price  might  become  prohibitive.  The 
choice  of  VergiPs  subject  coincided,  therefore,  with 
a  need  that  all  men  appreciated. 

The  Georgics,  however,  are  not  written  in  the 
spirit  of  a  colonial  advertisement.  In  the  youthful 
Culex  Vergil  had  dwelt  somewhat  too  emphatically 
upon  the  song-birds  and  the  cool  shade,  and  had 
drawn  upon  himself  the  genial  comment  of  Horace 
that  Alfius  did  not  find  conditions  in  the  country 
quite  as  enchanting  as  pictured.  This  time  the  poet 
paints  no  idealized  landscape.  Enticing  though  the 
picture  is,  Vergil  insists  on  the  need  of  unceasing, 
ungrudging  toil.  He  lists  the  weeds  and  blights, 
the  pests  and  the  vermin  against  which  the  farmer 
must  contend.  Indeed  it  is  in  the  contemplation 
of  a  life  of  toil  that  he  finds  his  honest  philosophy 
of  life:  the  gospel  of  salvation  through  work. 
Hardships  whet  the  ingenuity  of  manj  God  himself 
for  man's  own  good  brought  an  end  to  the  age  of 
golden  indolence,  shook  the  honey  from  the  trees, 
and  gave  vipers  their  venom.  Man 
alone  to  contend^i^^  ^*^  ^bfitingte  nature^ 
that  struggle  to  discover  his  owg,  wnrth.-  The 
Georgics  are  far  removed  trom  pastoral  allegory j 
Italy  is  no  longer  Arcadia,  it  is  just  Italy  in  all  its 
glory  and  all  its  cruelty. 


/       ^m-f 


\ 


it   i'l 


ill 


i62  VERGIL 

c       VergiPs  delight  in  nature  is  essentially  Roman, 
though  somewhat  more  self-conscious  than  that  of 
his  fellows.     There  is  little  of  the  sentimental  rap- 
ture that  the  eighteenth  century  discovered  for  us. 
Vergil  is  not  likely  to  stand  in  postures  before  the 
awful  solemnity  of  the  sea  or  the  majesty  of  wide 
vistas  from  mountain  tops.     Italian  hill-tops  afford 
views   of   numerous   charming   landscapes   but   no 
scenes  of  entrancing  grandeur  or  awe-inspiring  deso- 
lation, and  the  sea,  before  the  days  of  the  compass, 
was  too  suggestive  of  death  and  sorrow  to  invite 
consideration  of  its  lawless  beauty.     These  aspects 
of  nature  had  to  be  discovered  by  later  experiences 
m  other  lands.     At  first  glance  Vergil  seems  to  care 
most  for  the  obvious  gifts  of  Italy's  generous  ameni- 
ties, the  physical  pleasure  in  the  free  out-of-doors 
the  form  and  color  of  landscapes,  the  wholesome' 
^     life.     As  one  reads  on,  however,  one  becomes  aware 
Y  of  an  intimacy  and  fellowship  with  animate  things  . 
that  go  deeper.     Particularly  in  the  second  book  the 
very  blades  of  grass  and  tendrils  of  the  vines  seem 
to  be  sentient.     The  grafted  trees  « behold  with 
wonder "  strange  leaves  and  fruits  growing  from 
their  stems,  transplanted  shoots  «  put  off  their  wild- 
wood  instincts,"  the  thirsting  plant  « lifts  up  its 
head  "  m  gratitude  when  watered.     Our  own  gener- 
ation,  which   was   sedulously   enticed   into   nature 


THE    "GEORGICS"  163 

study  by  books  crammed  with  the  "  pathetic  fallacy," 
has  become  suspicious  of  everything  akin  to  "  nature 
faking."     It  has  learned  that  this  device  has  been 
a  trick  employed  by  a  crafty  pedagogy  for  the  sake 
of    appealing   to    unimaginative    children.     Vergil 
was  probably  far  from  being  conscious  of  any  such 
purpose.     As  a  Roman  he  simply  gave  expression 
to  a  mode  of  viewing  nature  that  still  seemed  natural 
to  most  Greeks  and  Romans.     The  Roman  farmer 
had  not  entirely  outgrown  his  primitive  animism. 
When  he  said   his  prayers  to  the  spirits  of  the 
groves,  the  fields,  and  the  streams,  he  probably  did" 
not  visualize  these  beings  in  human  formj  manifes-i 
tations  of  life  betokened  spirits  that  produced  life! 
and  growth.     VergiPs  phrases  are  the  poetic  expres-| 
sion  of  the  animism  of  the  unsophisticated  rustici 
which  at  an  earlier  age  had  shaped  the  great  naturq 
myths. 

And  if  Vergil  had  been  questioned  about  his  own 
faith  he  could  well  have  found  a  consistent  answer. 
Though  he  had  himself  long  ceased  to  pay  homage 
to  these  animae,  his  philosophy,  like  that  of  Lucre- 
tius, also  sought  the  life-principle  in  nature,  though 
he  sought  that  principle  a  step  farther  removed  in 
the  atom,  the  vitalized  seeds  of  things,  forever  in 
motion,  forever  creating  new  combinations,  and 
forever  working  the  miracles  of  life  by  means  of 


I 


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k; 


*N' 


m\ 


'  p 


ma 


I 


m 


f  f  ■ 


»6+  VERGIL 

the  energy  with  which  they  were  themselves  instinct. 
The  memorable  lines  on  spring  in  the  second  book 
are  cast  into  the  form  of  old  poetry,  but  the  basis 
of  them  is  Epicurean  energism,  as  in  Lucretius' 
prooemium.     Vergil's  study  of  evolution  had  for 
him  also  united  man  and  nature,  making  the  romance 
of  the  Georgics  possible}  it  had  shaped  a  kind  of 
scientific  animism  that  permitted  him  to  accept  the 
language  of  the  simple  peasant  even  though  its  con- 
notations were  for  him  more  complex  and  subtle. 

Finally,  the  careful  reader  will  discover  in  Ver- 
gil's nature  poetry  a  very  modern  attention  to  details^ 
such  as  we  hardly  expect  to  find  before  the  nine-  ^ 
teenth  century.     Here  again  Vergil  is  Lucretius' . 
companion.     This  habit  was  apparently  a  composite 
product.     The  ingredients  are  the  capacity  for  won- 
der that  we  find  in  some  great  poets  like  Words- 
worth and  Plato,  a  genius  for  noting  details,  bred 
in  him  as  in  Lucretius  by  long  occupation  with 
deductive  methods  of  philosophy,  -  scientific  pur- 
suits have  thus  enriched  modern  poetry  also  —  and 
a  sure  aesthetic  sense.     This  power  of  observation 
has  been  overlooked  by  many  of  Vergil's  commen- 
tators.      Coningfon,  for  example,  has  frequently 
done  the  poet  an  injustice  by  assuming  that  Vergil 
was  in  error  whenever  his  statements  seem  not  to 
accord  with  what  we  happen  to  know.    We  have 


THE    "GEORGICS"  165 

now  learned  to  be  more  wary.  It  is  usually  a  safer 
assumption  that  our  observation  is  in  error.  A  re- 
cent study  of  "  trees,  shrubs  and  plants  of  Vergil,'' 
illuminating  in  numberless  details,  has  fallen  into 
the  same  error  here  and  there  by  failing  to  notice 
that  Vergil  wrote  his  Bucolics  and  Georgics  not  near 
Mantua  but  in  southern  Italy.  The  modem  botan- 
ical critic  of  Vergil  should,  as  Mackail  has  said, 
study  the  flora  of  Campania  not  of  Lombardy.  In 
every  line  of  composition  Vergil  took  infinite  pains 
to  give  an  accurate  setting  and  atmosphere.  Car- 
copino"  has  just  astonished  us  with  proof  of  the 
poet's  minute  study  of  topographical  details  in  the 
region  of  Lavinium  and  Ostia,  Mackail '  has  vindi- 
cated his  care  as  an  antiquarian,  Warde  Fowler* 
has  repeatedly  pointed  out  his  scrupulous  accuracy 
in  portraying  religious  rites,  and  now  Sergeaunt," 
in  a  study  of  his  botany,  has  emphasized  his  habit 
of  making  careful  observations  in  that  domain. 

This  modern  habit  it  is  that  makes  the  Georgics 
read  so  much  like  Fabre's  remarkable  essays.  The 
study  of  the  bees  in  the  fourth  book  is,  of  course, 
not  free  from  errors  that  nothing  less  than  genera- 

®  Carcopino,  Virgile  et  les  origines  d^Ostie, 
^  Mackail,  Journal  of  Roman  Studies^   191 5* 
*  Warde  Fowler,  Religious  Exferience  of  the  Roman  PeofU^ 
p.  408. 

®  Sergeaunt,  Treesy  Shrubs^  and  Plants  of  Virgil. 


m 


|:t 


li 


'♦ 


■|  I 


1 66  VERGIL 

tions  of  close  scrutiny  could  remove.  But  the  right 
kind  of  observing  has  begun.  On  the  other  hand 
the  book  is  not  merely  a  farmer's  practical  manual 
on  how  to  raise  bees  for  profit.  The  poet's  interest 
is  in  the  amazing  insects  themselves,  their  how  and 

fwhy  and  wherefore.  It  is  the  mystery  of  their  in- 
tincts,  habits,  and  all-compelling  energy  that  leads 
im  to  study  the  bees,  and  finally  to  the  half- 
jponcealed  confession  that  his  philosophy  has  failed 
to  solve  the  problems  of  animate  nature. 


XV 
THE   AENEID 

While  Caesar  Octavian,  now  grown  to  full 
political  stature,  was  reuniting  the  East  and  the  West 
after  Actium,  Vergil  was  writing  the  last  pages  of 
the  Georgics.  The  battle  that  decided  .Rome's 
future  also  determined  the  poet's  next  theme.  The 
Epic  of  Rome,  abandoned  at  the  death  of  Caesar, 
unthinkable  during  the  civil  wars  which  followed, 
appealed  for  a  hearing  now  that  Rome  was  saved 
and  the  empire  restored.  Vergil's  youthful  enthu- 
siasm for  Rome,  which  had  sprung  from  a  critical 
reading  of  her  past  career,  seemed  fully  justified j 
he  began  at  once  his  Arma  virumque. 

The  Aeneid  reveals,  as  the  critics  of  nineteen  cen- 
turies have  reiterated,  an  unsurpassed  range  of  read- 
ing. But  it  is  not  necessary  to  repeat  the  evidence 
of  Vergil's  literary  obligations  in  an  essay  concerned 
chiefly  with  the  poet's  more  intimate  experiences. 
In  point  of  fact,  the  tracking  of  poetic  reminiscences 
in  a  poet  who  lived  when  no  concealment  of  bor- 
rowed thought  was  demanded  does  as  much  violence 
to  Vergil  as  it  does  to  Euripides  or  Petrarch.     The 

267 


II 


11 


;" 
■i 


fl 


m 


m 


;ll*  :>"l  i 


If 


/ 


if 


iiii 


I 


f 


1 68  VERGIL 

poet  has  always  been  expected  to  give  expression  to 
his  own  convictions,  but  until  recently  it  has  been 
considered  a  graceful  act  on  his  part  to  honor  the 
good  work  of  his  predecessors  by  the  frank  use,  in 
recognizable  form,  of  the  lines  that  he  most  ad- 
mires. The  only  requirement  has  been  that  the 
poet  should  assimilate,  and  not  merely  agglomerate 
his  acceptances,  that  he  should  as  Vergil  put  it, 
**  wrest  the  club  from  Hercules  "  and  wield  it  as  its 
master. 

In  essence  the  poetry  of  the  Aeneid  is  never 
Homeric,  despite  the  incorporation  of  many  Ho- 
meric lines.  It  is  rather  a  sapling  of  VergiPs  Hel- 
lenistic garden,  slowly  acclimated  to  the  Italian  soil, 
fed  richly  by  years  of  philosophic  study,  braced, 
pruned,  and  reared  into  a  tree  of  noble  strength 
and  classic  dignity.  The  form  and  majesty  of  the 
tree  bespeak  infinite  care  in  cultivation,  but  the  fruit 
has  not  lost  the  delicate  tang  and  savour  of  its  seed. 
The  poet  of  the  Cirisy  the  Copa,  the  Diraey  and  the 
Bucolics  is  never  far  to  seek  in  the  Ameid. 

It  would  be  a  long  story  to  trace  the  flowering 
in  the  Aeneid  of  the  seedling  sown  in  Vergil's  boy- 
hood garden-plot.^  The  note  of  intimacy,  unex- 
pected in  an  epic,  the  occasional  drawing  of  the  veil 

^  For  a  careful  study  of  this  subject  see  Duckett,  Hellenistic 
Influence  on  the  Aeneid^  Smith  College  Studies,  1920, 


THE   AENEID  169 

to  reveal  the  poet's  own  countenance,  an  un-Homeric 
sentimentality  now  and  then,  the  great  abundance 
of  sense-teeming  collocations,  the  depth  of  sympathy 
revealed  in  such  tragic  characters  as  Pallas,  Lausus, 
Euryalus,  the  insistent  study  of  inner  motives,  the 
meticulous  selection  of  incidents,  the  careful  artistry 
of  the  meter,  the  fastidious  choice  of  words,  and 
the  precision  of  the  joiner's  craft  in  the  composition 
of  traditional  elements,  all  suggest  the  habits  of 
work  practiced  by  the  friends  of  Cinna  and  Valerius 
Cato. 

The  last  point  is  well  illustrated  in  Sinon's  speech 
at  the  opening  of  the  second  book.  The  old  folk- 
tale of  how  the  "  wooden  horse,"  left  on  the  shore 
by  the  Greeks,  was  recklessly  dragged  to  the  citadel 
by  the  Trojans  satisfied  the  unquestioning  Homer. 
Vergil  does  not  take  the  improbable  on  faith.  Sinon 
IS  compelled  to  be  entirely  convincing.  In  his 
speech  he  uses  every  art  of  persuasion:  he  awakens 
in  turn  curiosity,  surprise,  pity,  admiration,  sym- 
pathy, and  faith.  The  passage  is  as  curiously 
wrought  as  any  episode  of  Catullus  or  the  Cirts.  It 
is  not,  as  has  been  held,  a  result  of  rhetorical  studies 
alone  J  it  reveals  rather  a  native  good  sense  tempered 
with  a  neoteric  interest  in  psychology  and  a  neoteric 
exactness  in  formal  composition.  And  yet  the  pas- 
sage exhibits  a  great  advance  upon  the  geometric 


t 


'I  i 


f!|' 


11^ 


•M. 


11 


PI' 


170  VERGIL 

formality  of  the  Ciris,  The  incident  is  not  treated 
episodically  as  it  might  have  been  in  Vergil's  early 
work.  The  pattern  is  not  whimsically  intricate  but 
is  shaped  by  an  understanding  mind.  While  its  art 
is  as  studied  and  conscious  as  that  of  the  Ciris,  it  has 
the  directness  and  integrity  of  Homeric  narrative. 
Yet  Vergil  has  not  forgotten  the  startling  effects 
that  Catullus  would  attain  by  compressing  a  long 
tale  into  a  suggestive  phrase,  if  only  a  memory  of 
the  tale  could  be  assumed.  The  story  of  Priam's 
death  on  the  citadel  is  told  in  all  its  tragic  horror 
till  the  climax  is  reached.  Then  suddenly  with 
astonishing  force  the  mind  is  flung  through  and  be- 
yond the  memories  of  the  awful  mutilation  by  the 
amazingly  condensed  phrase: 

Jacet  ingens  h'tore  truncus 
avulsumque  umeris  caput  et  sine  nomine  corpus. 

There  Vergil  has  given  only  the  last  line  of  a  sup- 
pressed tragedy  which  the  reader  is  compelled  to 
visualize  for  himself. 

Neoteric,  too,  is  the  accurate  observation  and  the 
patience  with  details  displayed  by  the  author  of  the 
Aeneid.  In  his  youth  Vergil  had,  to  be  sure, 
avoided  the  extremes  of  photographic  realism  illus- 
trated by  the  very  curious  Morelum,  but  he  had 
nevertheless,  in  works  like  the  Copa,  the  Dirae,  and 


THE    AENEID  171 

the  eighth  Eclogue,  practiced  the  craft  of  the  mini- 
aturist whenever  he  found  the  minutiae  aesthetically 
significant.  To  realize  the  precision  of  his  strokes 
even  then  one  has  but  to  recall  the  couplet  of  the 
Copa  which  in  an  instant  sets  one  upon  the  dusty 
road  of  an  Italian  July  midday: 

Nunc  cantu  crebro  rumpunt  arbusta  cicadae 
nunc  varia  in  gelida  sede  lacerta  latet 

Throughout  the  Aeneid,  the  patches  of  land- 
scape, the  retreats  for  storm-tossed  ships,  the  carved 
temple-doors,  the  groups  of  accoutred  warriors 
marching  past,  and  many  a  gruesome  battle  scene, 
are  reminders  of  this  early  technique. 

What  degrees  of  conscientious  workmanship  went 
into  these  results,  we  are  just  now  learning.  Car- 
copino,^  who,  with  a  copy  of  Vergil  in  hand,  has 
carefully  surveyed  the  Latin  coast  from  the  Tiber 
mouth,  past  the  site  of  Lavinium  down  to  Ardea,  is 
convinced  that  the  poet  traced  every  manoeuvre  and 
every  sally  on  the  actual  ground  which  he  chose  for 
his  theatre  of  action  in  the  last  six  books.  It  still 
seems  possible  to  recognize  the  deep  valley  of  the 
ambuscade  and  the  plain  where  Camilla  deployed 
her  cavalry.  Furthermore,  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  for  the  sake  of  a  heroic-age  setting  Vergil 

*  Carcopino,  Virgile  ct  les  origines  d^OsHe. 


1 
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172  VERGIL 

studied  the  remains  and  records  of  most  ancient 
Rome.  There  were  still  in  existence  in  various 
Latin  towns  sixth-century  temples  laden  with  an- 
tique arms  and  armor  deposited  as  votive  oflFerings, 
terracotta  statues  of  gods  and  heroes,  and  even  docu- 
ments stored  for  safe-keeping.  In  the  expansion 
of  Rome  over  the  Campus  Martius  unmarked  tombs 
with  their  antique  furniture  were  often  disclosed. 
It  is  apparent  from  his  works  that  Vergil  examined 
such  material,  just  as  he  delved  into  Varro's  antiqui- 
ties and  Cato's  "origins"  for  ancient  lore.  His 
remarks  on  Praeneste  and  Antemnae,  his  knowledge 
of  ancient  coin  symbols,  of  the  early  rites  of  the 
Hercules  cult,  show  the  results  of  these  early  habits 
of  work.  It  must  always  be  noticed,  however,  that 
in  his  mature  art  he  is  master  of  his  vast  hoard  of 
material.  There  is  never,  as  in  the  Culex  and  Ciris, 
a  display  of  irrelevant  facts,  a  yielding  to  the  temp- 
tation of  being  excursive  and  episodic.  Wherever 
the  work  had  received  the  final  touch,  the  composi- 
tion shows  a  flawless  unity. 

The  poet's  response  to  personal  experience  reveals 
itself  nowhere  more  than  in  the  political  aspect  of 
the  Aeneid,  a  fact  that  is  the  more  remarkable  be- 
cause Vergil  lived  so  long  in  Epicurean  circles  where 
an  interest  in  politics  was  studiously  suppressed. 


THE    AENEID  173 

What  makes  the  poem  the  first  of  national  epics  is, 
however,  not  a  devotion  to  Rome's  historical  claims 
to  primacy  in  Italy.  The  narrow  imperialism  of 
the  urban  aristocracy  finds  no  support  in  him.  Not  k 
the  city  of  Rome  but  Italy  is  the  f atria  of  the  \( 
Aeneidj  and  Italy  as  a  civilizing  and  peace-bringing  \ 
force,  not  as  the  exploiting  conqueror.  Here  we  J 
recognize  a  spirit  akin  to  Julius  Caesar.  VergiPs  S 
hero  Aeneas,  is  not  a  Latin  but  a  Trojan.  That 
fact  is,  of  course,  due  to  the  exigencies  of  tradition, 
but  that  Aeneas  receives  his  aid  from  the  Greek 
Evander  and  from  the  numerous  Etruscan  cities 
north  of  the  Tiber  while  most  of  the  Latins  join 
Turnus,  the  enemy,  cannot  be  attributed  to  tradition. 
In  fact,  Livy,  who  gives  the  more  usual  Roman  ver- 
sion, says  nothing  of  the  Greeks,  but  joins  Latinus 
and  the  Latian  aborigines  to  Aeneas  while  he  mus- 
ters the  Etruscans  under  the  Rutulian,  Turnus. 
The  explanation  for  VergiPs  striking  departure  from 
the  usual  patriotic  version  of  the  legend  is  rather 
involved  and  need  not  be  examined  here.  But  we 
may  at  any  rate  remark  his  wish  to  recognize  the 
many  races  that  had  been  amalgamated  by  the  state, 
to  refuse  his  approval  of  a  narrow  urban  patriotism, 
and  to  give  his  assent  to  a  view  of  Rome's  place  and 
mission  upon  which  Julius  Caesar  had  always  acted 
in  extending  citizenship  to  peoples  of  all  races,  in 


'  \ 


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174  VERGIL 

scattering  Roman  colonies  throughout  the  empire, 
and  in  setting  the  provinces  on  the  road  to  a  full 
participation  in  imperial  privileges  and  duties. 
With  such  a  policy  Vergil,  schooled  at  Cremona, 
Milan,  and  Naples,  could  hardly  fail  to  sympathize. 

It  has  been  inferred  from  the  position  of  authority 
which  Aeneas  assumes  that  Vergil  favored  a  strong 
monarchial  form  of  government  and  intended 
Aeneas  to  be,  as  it  were,  a  prototype  of  Augustus. 
The  inference  is  doubtless  over-hasty.  Vergil  had 
a  lively  historical  sense  and  in  his  hero  seems  only 
to  have  attempted  a  picture  of  a  primitive  king  of 
the  heroic  age.  Indeed  Aeneas  is  perhaps  more  of 
an  autocrat  than  are  the  Homeric  kings,  but  that  is 
because  the  Trojans  are  pictured  as  a  migrating 
group,  torn  root  and  branch  from  their  land  and 
government,  and  following  a  semi-divine  leader 
whose  directions  they  have  deliberately  chosen  to 
obey.  In  his  references  to  Roman  history,  in  the 
pageant  of  heroes  of  the  sixth  book,  as  well  as  in 
the  historical  scenes  of  the  shield,  no  monarchial 
tendencies  appear.  Brutus  the  tyrannicide,  Pompey 
and  Cato,  the  irreconcilable  foes  of  Caesar,  VergiPs 
youthful  hero,  receive  their  meed  of  praise  in  the 
Aeneid,  though  there  were  many  who  held  it  treason 
in  that  day  to  mention  rebels  with  respect. 

It  is  indeed  a  very  striking  fact  that  Vergil,  who 


THE   AENEID  175 

was  the  first  of  Roman  writers  to  attribute  divine 
honors  to  the  youthful  Octavian,  refrains  entirely 
from  doing  so  in  the  Aeneld,  at  a  time  when  the  rest 
of  Rome  hesitated  at  no  form  of  laudation.  Julius 
Caesar  is  still  recognized  as  more  than  human, 

vocabitur  hie  quoque  votis, 

but  Augustus  is  not.  The  contrast  is  significant. 
The  language  of  the  very  young  man  at  Naples  had, 
of  course,  been  colored  by  Oriental  forms  of  expres- 
sion that  were  in  part  unconsciously  imbibed  from 
the  conversations  of  the  Garden.  These  were 
phrases  too  which  Julius  Caesar  in  the  last  two  years 
of  his  life  encouraged  j  for  he  had  learned  from 
Alexander's  experience  that  the  shortest  cut  through 
constitutional  obstructions  to  supreme  power  lay  by 
way  of  the  doctrine  of  divine  royalty.  In  fact,  the 
Senate  was  forced  to  recognize  the  doctrine  before 
Caesar's  death,  and  after  his  death  consistently  voted 
public  sacrifices  at  his  grave.  Vergil  was,  therefore, 
following  a  high  authority  in  the  case  of  Caesar,  and 
was  drawing  the  logical  inference  in  the  case  of 
Octavian  when  he  wrote  the  first  Eclogue  and  the 
prooemium  of  the  Georgics.  This  makes  it  all  the 
more  remarkable  that  while  his  admiration  for 
Augustus  increased  with  the  years,  he  ceased  to  give 
any  countenance  to  the  growing  cult  of  "  emperor 


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I    A 


176  VERGIL 

worship."  That  the  restraint  was  not  simply  in 
obedience  to  a  governmental  policy  seems  clear,  for 
Horace,  who  in  his  youthful  work  had  shown  his 
distrust  of  the  government,  had  now  learned  to  make 
very  liberal  use  of  celestial  appellatives. 

Augustus,  then,  is  not  in  any  way  identified  with 
=/  the  semi-divine  Aeneas.  Vergil  does  not  even  place 
him  at  a  post  of  special  honor  on  the  mount  of  reve- 
lations, but  rather  in  the  midst  of  a  long  line  of  re- 
markable principes.  With  dignity  and  sanity  he 
lays  the  stress  upon  the  great  events  of  the  Republic 
and  upon  its  heroes.  We  may,  therefore,  justly 
conclude  that  when  he  wrote  the  epic  he  advocated 
a  constitution  of  the  type  proposed  by  Cicero,  in 
which  the  princeps  should  be  a  true  leader  in  the 
state  but  in  a  constitutional  republic. 

It  is  the  great  past,  illustrated  by  the  pageant  of 
heroes  and  the  prophetic  pictures  of  Aeneas's  shield, 
that  kindles  the  poet's  imagination.  His  sympa- 
thies are  generous  enough  to  include  every  race  with- 
in the  empire  and  every  leader  who  had  shared  in 
Rome's  making,  from  the  divine  founder,  Romulus, 
and  the  tyrannicide,  Brutus,  to  the  republican  mar- 
tyrs, Cato  and  Pompey,  as  well  as  the  restorers  of 
peace,  Caesar  and  Augustus.  He  has  no  false  patri- 
otism that  blinds  him  to  Rome's  shortcomings.  He 
frankly  admits  with  regret  her  failures  in  arts  and 


^, 


THE    AENEID  177 

sciences  with  a  modesty  that  permits  of  no  refer- 
ence to  his  own  saving  work.  What  Rome  has 
done  and  can  do  supremely  well  he  also  knows:  she 
can  rule  with  justice,  banish  violence  with  law,  and 
displace  war  by  peace.  After  the  years  of  civil  wars 
which  he  had  lived  through  in  agony  of  spirit,  it  is 
not  strange  that  such  a  mission  seemed  to  him  su- 
preme. And  that  is  why  the  last  words  of  Anchises 
to  Aeneas  are: 

Hae  tibi  erunt  artes:  pacisque  imponere  morem 
Parcere  subjectis  et  debellare  superbos.   . 

The  tragedy  of  Dido  reveals  better  perhaps  than 
any  other  portion  of  the  Aeneid  how  sensitively  the 
poet  reflected  Rome's  life  and  thought  rather  than 
those  of  his  Greek  literary  sources.  And  yet  the 
irrepressible  Servius  was  so  reckless  as  to  say  that 
the  whole  book  had  been  "  transferred  "  from  Apol- 
lonius.  Fortunately  we  have  in  this  case  the  alleged 
source,  and  can  meet  the  scholiast  with  a  sweeping 
denial.  Both  authors  portray  the  love  of  a  woman, 
and  there  the  similarity  ends.  ApoUonius  is  wholly 
dependent  upon  a  literal  Cupid  and  his  shafts. 
Vergil,  to  be  sure,  is  so  far  obedient  to  Greek  con- 
vention as  to  play  with  the  motive  —  Cupid  came  to 
the  banquet  in  the  form  of  Ascanius  —  but  only 
after  it  was  really  no  longer  needed.    The  psychol- 


« 


'\i 


li 


178  VERGIL 

ogy  of  passion's  progress  in  the  first  book  is  con- 
vincingly expressed  for  the  first  time  in  any  litera- 
ture.    Aeneas  first  receives  a  full  account  of  Dido's 
deeds  of  courage  and  presently  beholds  her  as  she 
sits  upon  her  throne,  directing  the  work  of  city 
building,  judging  and  ruling  as  lawgiver  and  admin- 
istrator, and  finally  proclaiming  mercy  for  his  ship- 
wrecked companions.     For  her  part  she,  we  discover 
as  he  does,  had  long  known  his  story,  and  in  her 
admiration  for  his  people  had  chosen  the  deeds  of 
Trojan  heroes  for  representation  upon  the  temple  . 
doors:  Sunt  lacrimae  rerum.     The  poet  simply  and  I 
naturally  leads  hero  and  heroine  through  the  ex-   ] 
perience   of   admiration,   generous   sympathy,   and  ( 
gratitude  to  an  inevitable  affection,  which  at  the   \ 
night's  banquet,  through  a  soul-stirring  tale  told    I 
with  dignity  and  heard  in  rapture,  could  only  ripen  ) 
into  a  very  human  passion.  / 

The  vital  difference  between  Vergil's  treatment 
of  the  theme  and  ApoUonius'  may  be  traced  to  the 
difference  between  the  Roman  and  the  Greek  family. 
Into  Italy  as  into  Greece  had  come,  many  centuries 
before,  hordes  of  Indo-European  migrants  from  the 
Danubian  region  who  had  carried  into  the  South 
the  wholesome  family  customs  of  the  North,  the 
very  customs  indeed  out  of  which  the  transalpine 
literature   of  medieval  chivalry  later  blossomed. 


THE    AENEID  179 

In  Greece  those  social  customs  —  still  recognizable 
in  Homer  and  the  early  mythology  —  had  in  the 
sixth  century  been  overwhelmed  by  a  back-flow  of 
Aegean  society,  when  the  northern  aristocracy  was 
compelled  to  surrender  to  the  native  element  which 
constituted  the  backbone  of  the  democracy.  With 
the  re-emergence  of  the  Aegean  society,  in  which 
woman  was  relegated  to  a  menial  position,  the  possi- 
bility of  a  genuine  romantic  literature  naturally 
came  to  an  end. 

At  Rome  there  was  no  such  cataclysm  during  the 
centuries  of  the  Republic.  Here  the  old  stock 
though  somewhat  mixed  with  Etruscans,  survived. 
The  ancient  aristocracy  retained  its  dominant  posi- 
tion in  the  state  and  society,  and  its  mores  even  pene- 
trated downward.  They  were  not  stifled  by  new 
southern  customs  welling  up  from  below,  at  least 
not  until  the  plebeian  element  won  the  support  of 
the  founders  of  the  empire,  and  finally  over- 
whelmed the  nobility.  At  Rome  during  the  Repub- 
lic there  was  no  question  of  social  inequality  between 
the  sexes,  for  though  in  law  the  patriarchal  clan- 
system,  imposed  by  the  exigencies  of  a  migrating 
group,  made  the  father  of  the  family  responsible 
for  civil  order,  no  inferences  were  drawn  to  the 
detriment  of  the  mother's  position  in  the  household. 
Nepos  once  aptly  remarked:     "Many  things  are 


iii.il 

I 


*\ 


1 8a  VERGIL 

considered  entirely  proper  here  which  the  Greeks 
hold  to  be  indelicate.  No  Roman  ever  hesitates  to 
take  his  wife  with  him  to  a  social  dinner.  In  fact, 
our  women  invariably  have  the  seat  of  honor  at 
temples  and  large  gatherings.  In  such  matters  we 
differ  wholly  from  the  Greeks." 

Indeed  the  very  persistence  of  a  nobility  was  in 
Itself  a  favorable  factor  in  establishing  a  better  posi- 
tion for  women.     Not  only  did  the  accumulation 
of  wealth  in  the  household  and  the  persistence  of 
courtly  manners  demand  respect  for  the  domina  of 
the  villa,  but  the  transference  of  noble  blood  and 
of  a  goodly  inheritance  of  name  and  land  through 
the  mother's  hand  were  matters  of  vital  importance. 
The  nobility  of  the  senate  moreover  long  controlled 
the  foreign  policy  of  the  empire,  and  as  the  empire 
grew  the  men  were  called  away  to  foreign  parts  on 
missions  and  legations.     At  such  times,  the  lady  in 
an  important  household  was  mistress  of  large  affairs. 
It  has  been  pointed  out  as  a  significant  fact  that  the 
father  of  the  Gracchi  was  engaged  for  long  years 
in  ambassadorial  and  military  duties.     The  training 
of  the  lads  consequently  fell  to  the  share  of  Cor- 
nelia, a  fact  which  may  in  some  measure  account  for 
the  humanitarian  interests  of  those  two  brilliant  re- 
formers.    The  responsibilities  that  fell  upon  the 
shoulders  of  such  women  must  have  stimulated  their 


THE    AENEID  i8i 

keenest  powers  and  thus  won  for  them  the  high  es- 
teem which,  in  this  case,  we  know  the  sons  accorded 
their  mother.  One  does  not  soon  forget  the  scene 
(Cicero,  Ad  An.  XV,  1 1)  at  which  Brutus  and  Cas- 
sius  together  with  their  wives,  Porcia  and  Tertia, 
and  Servilia,  the  mother  of  Brutus,  discussed 
momentous  decisions  with  Cicero.  When  Brutus 
stood  wavering,  Cicero  avoiding  the  issue,  and  Cas- 
sius  as  usual  losing  his  temper,  it  was  Servilia  who 
offered  the  only  feasible  solution,  and  it  was  her 
program  which  they  adopted.  Is  it  surprising  that 
Greek  historians  like  Plutarch  could  never  quite 
comprehend  the  part  in  Roman  politics  played  by 
women  like  Clodia,  Porcia  and  Terentia?  In  sheer 
despair  he  usually  resorts  to  the  hypotheses  of  some 
personal  intrigue  for  an  explanation  of  their  power- 
ful influence. 

It  is  in  truth  very  likely  that  had  Roman  litera- 
ture been  permitted  to  run  its  own  natural  course, 
without  being  overwhelmed,  as  was  the  Italian  liter- 
ature of  the  renaissance,  it  would  have  progressed 
much  farther  on  the  road  to  Romanticism.  Apol- 
lonius  was  far  more  a  restraining  influence  in  this 
respect  than  an  inspiration.  As  it  is,  VergiPs  first 
and  fourth  books  are  as  unthinkable  in  Greek  dress 
as  is  the  sixth.  They  constitute  a  very  conspicuous 
landmark  in  the  history  of  literature. 


I 


I 


^>^»«iC-  -d^,^4_    -ft 


•t 


^'i 


i8a  VERGIL 

Vergil  does  not  wholly  escape  the  powerful  con- 
ventions of  his  Greek  predecessors:  in  his  fourth 
book,  for  instance,  there  are  suggestions  of  the 
melodramatic  "maiden's  lament"  so  dear  to  the 
music  hall  gallery  of  Alexandria.  But  Vergil, 
apparently  to  his  own  surprise,  permits  his  Roman 
understanding  of  life  to  prevail,  and  transcends  his 
first  intentions  as  soon  as  he  has  felt  the  grip  of  the 
character  he  is  portraying.  Dido  quickly  emerges 
from  the  role  of  a  temptress  designed  as  a  last 
snare  to  trap  the  hero,  and  becomes  a  woman  who 
reveals  human  laws  paramount  even  to  divine 
ordinance.  Once  realizing  this  the  poet  sacrifices 
even  his  hero  and  wrecks  his  original  plot  to  be  true 
to  his  insight  into  human  nature.  The  confession 
of  Aeneas,  as  he  departs,  that  in  heeding  heaven's 
command  he  has  blasphemed  against  love  —  polluto 
amore  —  how  strange  a  thought  for  the  pus  Aeneas! 
That  sentiment  was  not  Greek,  it  was  a  new  flash  of 
intuition  of  the  very  quality  of  purest  Romance. 

The  Aeneid  is  also  a  remarkably  religious  poem 
to  have  come  from  one  who  had  devoted  so  many 
enthusiastic  years  to  a  materialistic  philosophy. 
Indeed  it  is  usual  to  assume  that  the  poet  had  aban- 
doned his  philosophy  and  turned  to  Stoicism  before 
his  death.     But  there  is  after  all  no  legitimate 


THE   AENEID  .183 

ground  for  this  supposition.  The  Aeneid  has,  of 
course,  none  of  the  scientific  fanaticism  that  mars 
the  Aetna  J  and  the  poet  has  grown  mellow  and  toler- 
ant with  years,  but  that  he  was  still  convinced  of  the 
general  soundness  of  the  Epicurean  hypotheses 
seems  certain.  Many  puzzles  of  the  Aeneid  zrt 
at  least  best  explained  by  that  view.  The  repetition 
of  his  creed  in  the  first  Aeneid  ought  to  warn  us  that 
his  enthusiasm  for  the  study  of  Rerum  natura  did 
not  die.  Indeed  the  Aeneid  is  full  of  Epicurean 
phrases  and  notions.  The  atoms  of  fire  are  struck 
out  of  the  flint  (VI,  6),  the  atoms  of  light  are* 
emitted  from  the  sun  (VII,  527,  and  VIII,  23), 
early  men  were  born  duro  robore  and  lived  like  those 
described  in  the  fifth  book  of  Lucretius  (VIII,  320), 
and  Conington  finds  almost  two  hundred  reminis- 
cences of  Lucretius  in  the  Aeneid y  the  proportion  in- 
creasing rather  than  decreasing  in  the  later  books.^ 
It  is,  however,  in  the  interpretation  of  the  word 
jatum  and  the  role  played  by  the  gods*  that  the 
test  of  VergiPs  philosophy  is  usually  applied.    The 

*  Servius,  VI,  264,  makes  the  explicit  statement:  ex  majore 
parte,  Sironem,  id  est,  magistrum  Epicureum  sequitur. 

*  The  passages  have  been  analyzed  and  discussed  frequently. 
See  especially  Heinze,  Vergils  Efische  Techniky  290  ff.,  who 
interprets  Zeus  as  fate;  Matthaei,  Class.  Qtmrt,  191 7,  pp.  11-26, 
who  denies  the  identity;  Drachmann,  Guderne  hos  Vergil^  1887; 
Maclnnis,  Class,  Rev.  191  o,  p.  160,  and  Warde  Fowler,  Aeneas 
at  the  Site  of  Romey  pp.  122  ff.  For  a  fuller  statement  of  this 
question  see  Am.  Jour,  PM,  19202 


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184  VERGIL 

modern  equivalent  of  fatum  is,  as  Guyau '  has  said, 
determinism.  Determinism  was  accepted  by  both 
schools  but  with  a  diflFerence.  To  the  Stoic,  fatum 
is  a  synonym  of  Providence  whose  popular  name  is 
Zeus.  The  Epicurean  also  accepts  fatum  as  govern- 
ing the  universe,  but  it  is  not  teleological,  and  Zeus 
is  not  identified  with  it  but  is,  like  man,  subordinated 
to  it.  Again,  the  Stoic  is  consistently  fatalistic. 
Even  man's  moral  obligations,  which  are  admitted, 
imply  no  real  freedom  in  the  shaping  of  results,  for 
though  man  has  the  choice  between  pursuing  his  end 
voluntarily  (which  is  virtue)  or  kicking  against  the 
pricks  (which  is  vice),  the  sum  total  of  his  accom- 
plishments is  not  altered  by  his  choice:  ducunt  volen- 
tern,  fatay  nolentem.  trahunt.  On  the  other  hand, 
VergiPs  master,  while  he  affirms  the  causal  nexus  for 
the  governance  of  the  universe: 

ncc  sanctum   numen   fait   frotollere   fines 
posse  neque  adversus  naturae  foedera  niti 

(Lucr.  V,  309),  posits  a  spontaneous  initiative  in 
the  soul-atoms  of  man: 

quod  fatt  foedera  rumfat 
ex  infinito  ne  causam  causa  sequatur, 

(Lucr.  II,  254).  If  then  Vergil  were  a  Stoic  his 
Jupiter  should  be  omnipotent  and  omniscient  and 

^  Morale  d^Eficure^  P*  72. 


THE   AENEID  185 

the  embodiment  of  fatum^  and  his  human  characters 
must  be  represented  as  devoid  of  independent 
power  j  but  such  ideas  are  not  found  in  the  Aeneid. 
Jupiter  is  indeed  called  "  omnipotens  "  at  times, 
but  so  are  Juno  and  Apollo,  which  shows  that  the 
term  must  be  used  in  a  relative  sense.  In  a  few 
cases  he  can  grant  very  great  powers  as  when  he  tells 
Venus:  Imperium  sine  fine  dedi  (I,  278).  But  very 
providence  he  never  seems  to  be.  He  draws 
(sortitur)  the  lots  of  fate  (III,  375),  he  does  not 
assign  them  at  will,  and  he  unrolls  the  book  of  fate 
and  announces  what  he  finds  (I,  261).  He  is  power- 
less to  grant  Cybele's  prayer  that  the  ships  may  es- 
cape decay: 

Cui  tanta  deo  permissa  potestas?     (IX,  97.) 

He  cannot  decide  the  battle  between  the  warriors 
until  he  weighs  their  fates  (XII,  725),  and  in  the 
council  of  the  gods  he  confesses  explicitly  his  non- 
interference with  the  laws  of  causality: 

Sua  cuique  exorsa  laborem 
Fortunamque  f erent.    Rex  Jupiter  omnibus  idem. 
Fata  viam  invenient.     (X,  112.) 
And  here  the  scholiast  naively  remarks: 

Videtur  hie  ostendisse  aliud  esse  fata,  aliud  Jovem.* 

•  Serv.  ad  loc,     Maclnnis,  Class,  Rev.  1910,  p.  172,  cites 
several  other  passages  to  the  point  in  refutation  of  Heinze. 


1 


Irff 


1 86  VERGIL 

Again,  contrary  to  the  Stoic  creed,  the  poet  con- 
ceives of  his  human  characters  as  capable  of  initiating 
action  and  even  of  thwarting  fate.  Aeneas  in  the 
second  book  rushes  into  battle  on  an  impulse  j  he 
could  forget  his  fates  and  remain  in  Sicily  if  he 
chose  (V,  700).  He  might  also  remain  in  Carth- 
age, and  explains  fully  why  he  does  notj  and  Dido, 
if  left  nescia  fatty  might  thwart  the  fates  (I,  299), 
and  finally  does,  slaying  herself  before  her  time  ^ 
(IV,  696).  The  Stoic  hypothesis  seems  to  break 
down  completely  in  such  passages. 

Can  we  assume  an  Epicurean  creed  with  better 
.success?  At  least  in  so  far  as  it  places  the  foedera 
maturae  above  the  gods  and  attributes  some  freedom 
of  will  and  action  to  men,  for  as  we  have  seen  in 
both  of  these  matters  Vergil  agrees  with  Lucretius. 
But  thr-e  is  one  apparent  difficulty  in  that  Vergil, 
contrary  to  his  ttacher's  usual  practice,  permits  the 
interfe-  -i-s  o^  th^  -oJs  it.  human  acfJon,  The  dif- 
ficulty is,  however,  only  apparent,  if,  as  Vergil  does, 
we  conceive  of  these  gods  simply  as  heroic  and  super- 
human characters  in  the  drama,  accepted  from  an 
heroic  age  in  order  to  keep  the  ancient  atmosphere 
in  which  Aeneas  had  lived  in  men's  imagination  ever 
since  Homer  first  spoke  of  him.  As  such  characters 
they  have  the  power  of  initiative  and  the  right  to 

^  See  MatthaeJ,  Class,  Quart,   1917,  p.   19. 


THE    AENEID  187 

interfere  in  action  that  Epicurus  attributes  to  men^ 
and  in  so  far  as  they  are  of  heroic  stature  their  ac- 
tions may  be  the  more  eflFective.  Thus  far  an  Epi- 
curean might  well  go,  and  must  go  in  an  epic  of  the 
heroic  age.  This  is,  of  course,  not  the  same  as  say- 
ing that  Vergil  adopted  the  gods  in  imitation  of 
Homer  or  that  he  needed  Olympic  machinery  be- 
cause he  supposed  it  a  necessary  part  of  the  epic  tech- 
nique. Surely  Vergil  was  gifted  with  as  much  criti- 
cal acumen  as  Lucan.  But  he  had  to  accept  these 
creatures  as  subsidiary  characters  the  moment  he 
chose  Aeneas  as  his  hero,  for  Aeneas  was  the  son  of 
Venus  who  dwelt  with  the  celestials  at  least  a  part 
of  the  time.  Her  presence  in  turn  involved  Juno 
and  Jupiter  and  the  rest  of  her  daily  associates. 
Furthermore,  since  the  tale  was  of  the  heroic  age  of  ( 
long  ago,  the  characters  must  naturally  behave  as  / 
the  characters  of  that  day  were  wont  to  do,  and  there  ^ 
were  old  books  like  Homer  and  Hesiod  from  which 
every  schoolboy  had  become  familiar  with  their  be- 
havior. If  the  poet  wished  to  make  a  plausible 
tale  of  that  period  he  could  no  more  undertake  to 
modernize  his  characters  than  could  Tennyson  in  his 
Idylls,  The  would-be  gods  are  in  the  tale  not  to 
reveal  VergiPs  philosophy  —  they  do  not  —  but  to 
orient  the  reader  in  the  atmosphere  in  which  Aeneas 
had  always  been  conceived  as  moving.     They  per- 


il 


1 1 


/ 


} 


./ 


-^ 


^^-^ 


i88  VERGIL 

fdrm  the  same  function  as  the  heroic  accoutrements 
and  architecture  for  a  correct  description  of  which 
Vergil  visited  ancient  temples  and  studied  Cato. 

Had  he  chosen  a  contemporary  hero  or  one  less 
blessed  with  celestial  relatives  there  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  he  would  have  employed  the  super- 
human personages  at  all.  If  this  be  true  it  is  as 
uncritical  to  search  for  the  poet's  own  conception  of 
divinity  in  these  personages  as  it  would  be  to  infer 
his  taste  in  furniture  from  the  straw  cot  which  he 
chooses  to  give  his  hero  at  Evander's  hovel.  In  the 
epic  of  primitive  Rome  the  claims  of  art  took  prece- 
dence over  personal  creed,  and  so  they  would  with 
any  true  poet  3  and  if  any  critic  were  prosaic  enough 
to  object,  Vergil  might  have  answered  with  Livy: 
Datur  haec  venia  antiquitati  ut  miscendo  humana 
divinis  primordia  urbium  augustiora  faciat,  and  if 
^he  inconsistency  with  his  philosophy  were  stressed 
he  could  refer  to  Lucretius'  proemium.  It  is  clear 
then  that  while  the  conceptions  of  destiny  and  free- 
will found  in  the  Aeneid  are  at  variance  with  Stoic 
creed  at  every  point,  they  fit  readily  into  the  Epi- 
curean scheme  of  things  as  soon  as  we  grant  what 
any  Epicurean  poet  would  readily  have  granted  that 
the  celestials  might  be  employed  as  characters  of  the 
drama  if  in  general  subordinated  to  the  same  laws 
jf  causality  and  of  freedom  as  were  human  beings. 


P 


THE    AENEID  189 

What  then  are  we  to  say  of  the  Stoic  coloring  of 
the  sixth  book?  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  actually 
Stoic.  It  is  a  syncretism  of  mystical  beliefs,  de- 
veloped by  Orphic  and  Apocalyptic  poets  and  mystics 
from  Pythagoras  and  Plato  to  a  group  of  Hellenistic 
writers,  popularized  by  the  later  less  logical  Stoic 
philosophers  like  Posidonius,  and  gaining  in  VergiPs 
day  a  wide  acceptance  among  those  who  were  grow- 
ing impatient  of  the  exacting  metaphysical  processes 
of  thought.  Indeed  Vergil  contributed  something 
toward  foisting  these  beliefs  upon  early  Christianity, 
though  they  were  no  more  essential  to  it  than  to 
Stoicism. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  this  mystical  setting  was  here 
adopted  because  the  poet  needed  for  his  own  pur- 
poses* a  vision  of  incorporated  souls  of  Roman 
heroes,  a  thing  which  neither  Epicurean  nor  ortho- 
dox Stoic  creed  could  provide.  So  he  created  this 
mythos  as  Plato  for  his  own  purpose  created  a  vision 
of  Er.®  The  dramatic  purpose  of  the  descensus  was 
of  course  to  complete  for  Aeneas  the  progressive 
revelation  of  his  mission,  so  skilfully  developed  by 

*  No  one  would  attempt  to  infer  Stephen  Phillips'  eschatology 
from  the  setting  of  his  Christ  in  Hades, 

®  Vergil  indeed  was  careful  to  warn  the  reader  (VI,  893)  that 
the  portal  of  unreal  dreams  refers  the  imagery  of  the  sixth 
book  to  fiction,  and  Servius  reiterates  the  warning.  On  the 
employment  of  myths  by  Epicureans  see  chapter  VIII,  above. 


■  i. 


A 


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190  VERGIL' 

careful  stages  all  through  the  third  book/**  to  give 
t^  hero  his  final  commands  and  to  inspire  him  for 
the  final  struggle/^  Then  the  poet  realized  that  he 
could  at  the  same  time  produce  a  powerful  artistic 
effect  upon  the  reader  if  he  accomplished  this  by 
means  of  a  vision  of  Rome's  great  heroes  presented 
in  review  by  Anchises  from  the  mount  of  revela- 
tions, for  this  was  an  age  in  which  Rome  was  grow- 
ing proud  of  her  history.  But  to  do  this  he  must 
have  a  mythos  which  assumed  that  souls  lived  be- 
fore their  earthly  existence.  A  Homeric  limbo  of 
departed  souls  did  not  suffice  (though  Vergil  also 
availed  himself  of  that  in  order  to  recall  the  friends 
of  the  early  books).  With  this  in  view  he  builds 
his  home  of  the  dead  out  of  what  Servius  calls  much 
sapientia,  filling  in  details  here  and  there  even  from 
the  legendary  lower-world  personages  so  that  the 
reader  may  meet  some  familiar  faces.  However, 
the  setting  is  not  to  be  taken  literally,  for  of  course 
neither  he  nor  anyone  else  actually  beljeved  that 
prenatal  spirits  bore  the  attributes  and  garments  of 
their  future  existence.  Nor  is  the  poet  concerned 
about  the  eschatology  which  had  to  be  assumed  for 
the  setting;  but  his  judgments  on  life,  though 
afforded  an  opportunity  to  find  expression  through 

***  See  Heinze,  Efische  Techniky  pp.  82  fF. 
**  This  Vergil  indicates  repeatedly:  Aen,  V,  737;  VI,  718, 
806-7,  890-2. 


m 


THE   AENEID  191 

the  characters  of  the  scene,  are  not  allowed  to  be 
circumscribed  by  them;  they  are  his  own  deepest 
convictions. 

It  has  frequently  been  sdd  that  VergiPs  philoso- 
phical system  is  confused  and  that  his  judgments 
on  providence  are  inconsistent,  that  in  fact  he  seems 
not  to  have  thought  his  problems  through.  This  is 
of  course  true  so  far  as  it  is  true  of  all  the  students 
of  philosophy  of  his  day.  Indeed  we  must  admit 
that  with  the  very  inadequate  psychology  of  that 
time  no  reasonable  solution  of  the  then  central  prob- 
lem of  determinism  could  be  found.  But  there  is 
no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  poet  did  not  have 
a  complete  mastery  of  what  the  best  teachers  of  his 
day  had  to  offer. 

Vergil's  Epicureanism,  however,  served  him 
chiefly  as  a  working  hypothesis  for  scientific  pur- 
poses. With  its  ethical  and  religious  implications 
he  had  not  concerned  himself  j  and  so  it  was  not  per- 
mitted in  his  later  days  to  interfere  with  a  deep  re- 
spect for  the  essentials  of  religion.  Similarly,  the 
prof oundest  students  of  science  today,  men  who  in 
all  their  experiments  act  implicitly  and  undeviat- 
ingly  on  the  hypotheses  of  atomism  and  determinism 
in  the  world  of  research,  are  usually  the  last  to  deny 
the  validity  of  the  basic  religious  tenets.  In  his 
knowledge  of  religious  rites  Vergil  reveals  an  exact- 


192  VERGIL 

ness  that  seems  to  point  to  very  careful  observances 
in  his  childhood  home.  They  have  become  second 
nature  as  it  were,  and  go  as  deep  as  the  filial  devo- 
tion which  so  constantly  brings  the  word  fietas  to  his 
pen. 

But  his  religion  is  more  than  a  matter  of  rites  and 
ceremonies.  It  has,  to  a  degree  very  unusual  for 
a  Roman,  associated  itself  with  morality  and 
especially  with  social  morality.  The  culprits  of  his 
Tartarus  are  not  merely  the  legendary  oflFenders 
against  exacting  deities: 

Hie  quibus  invisi  f ratres,  dum  vita  manebat, 
Pulsatusve  parens  et  fraus  innexa  clienti, 
Aut  qui  divitiis  soli  incubuere  repertis 
Nee  partem  posuere  suis,  quae  maxima  turba  est. 

The  virtues  that  win  a  place  in  Elysium  indicate  the 
same  fusion  of  religion  with  humanitarian  sympa- 
thies: 

Hie  manus  ob  patriam  pugnando  vulnera  passi, 
Quique  sacerdotes  casti,  dum  vita  manebat, 
Quique  pii  vates  et  Phoebo  digna  locuti, 
Inventas  aut  qui  vitam  excoluere  per  artis, 
Quique  sui  memores  aliquos  fecere  merendo: 
Omnibus  his  nivea  cinguntur  tempora  vitta. 

His  Elysium  is  far  removed  from  Homer's  limbo  j 
truly  did  he  deserve  his  place  among  those 

Phoebo  digna  locuti.  '^ 


THE    AENEID  193 

Before  he  had  completed  his  work  the  poet  set 
out  for  Greece  to  visit  the  places  which  he  had  de- 
scribed and  which  in  his  fastidious  zeal  he  seems  to 
have  thought  in  need  of  the  same  careful  examina- 
tion that  he  had  accorded  his  Italian  scenery.  Three 
years  -he  still  thought  requisite  for  the  completion 
of  his  epic.     But  at  Megara  he  fell  ill,  and  being 
carried  back  in  Augustus'  company  to  Brundisium 
he  died  there,  in  19  b.  c.  at  the  age  of  fifty-one. 
Before  his  death  he  gave  instructions  that  his  epic 
should  be  burned  and  that  his  executors,  his  life- 
long friends  Varius  and  Tucca,  should  suppress 
whatever  of  his  manuscripts  he  had  himself  failed 
to  publish.     In  order  to  save  the  Aeneidy  however, 
Augustus  interposed  the  supreme  authority  of  the 
state  to  annul  that  clause  of  the  will.     The  minor 
works  were  probably  left  unpublished  for  some  time. 
Indeed,  there  is  no  convincing  proof  that  such  works 
as  the  Cirlsy  the  Aetnay  and  the  Catalefton  were  cir- 
culated in  the  Augustan  age. 

The  ashes  were  carried  to  his  home  at  Naples 
and  buried  beneath  a  tombstone  bearing  the  simple 
epitaph  written  by  some  friend  who  knew  the  poet's 
simplicity  of  heart: 

Mantua  me  genuit,  Calabri  rapuere,  tenet  nunc 
Parthenope;  cecini  pascua  rura  duces. 


i 


f 


194  VERGIt 

His  tomb  ^^  was  on  the  roadside  outside  the  city,  as 
was  usual  —  Donatus  says  on  the  highway  to  Puteoli, 
nearly  two  miles  from  the  gates.  Recent  examina- 
tion of  the  region  has  shown  that  by  some  cataclysm 
of  the  middle  ages  not  mentioned  in  any  record,  the 
road  and  the  tomb  have  subsided,  and  now  the  quiet 
waters  of  the  golden  bay  flow  many  fathoms  over 
them. 

^^  Gunther,  PausUyfon^  p,  zoia 


' 


I    i 


I" 


m 


INDEX 


,. 


'if 


s 


■■■ili|i|iiliiiiiiii^^^^  


INDEX 


I 


*,- 


it 


r 


1*  j". 


^' 


Acestes,  74. 

Aeneas,  i74-7« 

Aeneid,  the,  43>  45>  55>  70> 

72,  75.  76,  167-194. 
^^/«j,    the,    58-63,    65,   9»> 

102. 
Alexandrian  poetry,   53»   ^S^, 

146,  168  ff. 
Alfenus   Varus,    14,    I23>    °- 
Allegory,  no  if.,  129' 
Ancestry  of  Vergil,  4. 
Animism,  ^62. 
Annius  timber,  81. 
^-♦^Iquarian   lore    in    the   Ae' 

neidy  171. 
Antony,  Mark,  18,  46,  78  ff., 

81   ff. 
Antony,    Lucius,    at    Perugia, 

Apollodorus,    the    rhetorician, 

I9»  H5»  H8. 
Apollonius    of    Rhodes,    44> 

178. 
Archias,  the  poet,  57. 
Asianists,  the,  18. 
Atticists,  the,  19,  66,  86,  ii8, 

150. 
Auctor  ad  Herenniwm^  21. 
Augustus,  176;  cf.  Octavius. 
Avernus,  Lake,  57. 

Birt's  edition  of  the  Caidef- 

tOlty      20,      24. 


Brutus,   M.   Junius,    35,   78, 

87  ff.,  141- 
Bucolics,  the,  see  Eclogues, 

Burial-place  of  Vergil,  I94« 

Caecilius  of  Caleacte,  56. 
Callimachus,  38,  130. 
Calvus,  C.  Licinius,  19,  43. 
Capua,  130. 
Cassius,  Longinus,  C,  51,  77> 

87  ff. 
Cataleftotty  No.  I,  52,  65; 
II,  85;  111,  25;  IV,  65; 
V,  20,  47,  48;  VII,  52,  53; 
VIII,  7,  95;  IX,  68,  89-96; 
X,  81  ff.;  XIII,  23,  24; 
XIV,  67,  69. 
Catullus,     C.     Valerius,     14, 

37-40,  42-45,  53,  65,  80, 
81  ff.,93,  139,  146-9,169. 

Celts,  the,  5  ff. 

Child,  of  the  fourth  Eclogue, 

137- 
Cicero,  M.   ^ullius,    19,   20, 

49,  78  ff.,  132,  139. 
Cinna,   C.    Helvius,    14,    43, 

117,  132. 

Ciris,  the,  26,  35-47,  »7  n-> 

96,  99,  146,  169,  170- 
Cisalpine  Gaul,   13. 
Civil  War,  the,  22. 
Classicism,  140  ff-,  HS-^SJ- 
Cleopatra  and  Dido,  75. 

197 


\ 


i] 


198 


INDEX 


It 


Clodia,  181. 

Confiscation  of  Vergil's  lands, 

122  S. 
Co  fa,  the,  154. 
Cornificius,     the     poet,     43, 

116  ff. 
Cremona,  15,  15. 
Culexy   the,   28-34,   47>   68, 

142. 
Cumae,  55,  57. 
Cytheris  (Lycoris),  119. 

Daphnis,   115   flf. 
Death  of  Vergil,   193. 
Diction,  purity  of,  66,   146- 

149. 
Dido,  75,  177  flf. 
Diehl,  Vitae  Vergilianaey  123. 
DiraCy  the,  129-13 1. 
Donatus,  the   Vita  of,  8,  26, 

58,  69. 

Eclogues,  the,  46,  110-138, 
141;  No.  I,  122,  128-30; 
No.  II,  112;  No.  IV,  45; 

56,  575  134-137;  No.  V, 
IIS  ff-;  No.  VI,  52,  68, 
70,  96-100,  119,  126, 
140;  No.  VIII,  132-134; 
No.  IX,  122-128;  No.  X, 
II 8-1 20,  127. 

Education  of  Vergil,    15    ff., 

47  ff. 
"Emperor    Worship,"    54-6, 

175. 
Ennius,  43. 

Epic,  an  early  effort  at,  67  ff. 

Epicurean  philosophy,  47,  50, 

57,  98,  lOi  ff.,  106-8,  183. 
Epidius,  18,  20,  31. 


Epigrams   of   Vergil,    66    ff., 

see  Catalcfton, 
Epyllia,  38  ff. 
Ethics  in  the  Aeneid,  192. 
Etruscans,  173. 
Evictions  by  the  triumvirs,  95, 

122. 
Evolution,  105  ff. 

Fate,  in  the  Aeneid,  184  ff. 
Fowler,   W.   W.,   Studies  of, 

34,  75. 
Freedmen,  142. 

Fundanius,  145. 

Gallus,  Cornelius,  99,  118  ff., 

123,  132,  147.  148. 
"  Garden,"   the,  n.-ar  Naples, 

48-63,  79. 
Georgics,  the,  49,  143,  i;«  • 

166. 
Golden  Age,  the,  135. 
"Grand  Style,"  the,  19,  146- 

149. 
Greeks,   in  the  Aeneid,   173. 

Hades,  190. 

Herculaneum,  48,  51,  77. 
Homer,  43,  168,  170. 
Horace,  30,  34,  52,  53,  66, 
135,  141-151,  158. 

Imperial  Cult,  the,  54-56, 
175. 

Julius  Caesar,  5,  15,  19,  22, 
23>  55,  64,  68,  71,  75,  77, 
131,  173. 

Law,  the  study  of,  21. 
Literary  theory,  53,  145-151. 


INDEX 

59,    97, 


199 


Lucretius,    1 8,    47, 

102,  159,  164,  183. 
Ludus  TroiaCy  71,  73. 
Lycoris  (Cytheris),  119. 
Lydia,  the,  131. 
Lysias,  as  model  of  style,  86, 

Maecenas,  C.  Cilnius,  48,  96, 
144;  the  literary  circle  of, 
139-151. 

Magia,  VergiPs  mother,  8. 

Mantua,  3,  113,  125. 

Maro,  meaning  of,  4. 

Martial,  on  the  CuUx,  33. 

Materialism,  61,  lOi  ff. 

Meleager  of  Gadara,  56. 

Melissus,  26. 

Messalla,  M.  Valerius,  35,  46, 

73,  87-94,  III,  140,  ISO- 
Messianic    prophecy,    56    ff., 

134  ff. 
Metrical  technique,  34,  43. 
Milan,  15,  17. 
Mointain      scenery     in     the 

Eclogues  J  114. 

Naples,   35,   48-63,   70,   95> 

114  ff.,  130,  141. 
Nationalism    in    the    Aeneid, 

173  ff. 
Nature,  observation  of,  104  ff., 

164-166,   171. 
"New  poetry,"  the  neoteroi, 

17,  38  ff.,  93,  118,  149. 
Nicolaus  Damascenus,  30. 

Octavius,    or    Octavianus,    18, 

29-32,  55,  73,  75,  78  ff., 
89  ff.,  119,  129,  135,  137, 

139,    154,    167,    175,    see 

Augustus. 
Octavius  Musa,  65. 


Oracles,  the  Sibylline,  58. 
Orientals  at  Naples,  54  ff. 
Ovid,  121. 

Parthenius,  57. 

Parody,    Vergil's   in    Catdlef' 

ton,  X,  81  ff. 
Pasiphae,  the  myth  of,  99. 
Pastoral  elegy,  116  ff.,  120. 
Pastoral  poetry,  32,  68. 
"Pathetic  fallacy,"  the,   163. 
Patriotism  in  the  Aeneid,  176. 
Peace  of  Brundisium,  135. 
Perusine  War,  the,  124. 
Pharsalia,   the   battle   of,    23, 

26,  64. 
|*hilippi,  the  battle  of,  88,  142. 
Philodemus,    48-54,    62,   65, 

77,  79,,  95-100,  136. 
Philosophic     study,     47     ff., 

182  ff. 
Piso,  Calpumius,  49,  77. 
"Plain  style"  the,   146—149. 
Plato,  189,  190. 
Plotius  Tucca,  52,  65,  140. 
Politics     of     the     Epicurean 

group,  77  ff. 
Pollio,    C.    Asinius,    123    ff., 

132  ff.,  148,  150. 
Pompeii,  55,  114. 
Pompey,   the   Great,   22,   25, 

26. 
Porcia,  181. 

Portraits  of  Vergil,  12  ff. 
Posilipo,  114,  194. 
Priafeay  the  three,  157. 
Probus,  the  Vita  of,  10,  52. 
Propertius,  92,  121,  147,  148. 
Purity   of   diction,   66,    146- 

149, 
JPurfureus  fannus,  40. 


'  I 


It' 


'■^-*'-*r«*i 


200 


INDEX 


% 


I 

V 


Quintilius  Varus,  14,  52,  53,      Stoicism,  103,  187  ff. 
78,  97-100,  126,  140,  148.      Syrians  at  Naples,  54. 


Rand,  Young  Virgil's  Poetry, 

42,  58. 
Realism  in  the  Eclogues,  133; 

in  the  Aeneidj  182  ff. 
Res  Romanae  of  Vergil,  67  ff. 
Rhetoric,  16  ff.,  21. 
Romantic  poetry,   35,   38   ff., 

44. 
Romanticism,     1 04    ff.>    162, 

177  ff.,  181. 

Scholiasts,  on  Vergil,  in,  122. 
Scylla,  36. 

Servius,  58,  69,  71,  96,   125. 
Siro,  18,  35,  47  ff-i  49>  95" 

100,  140. 
Skutsch,  Aus  Vergils  Fruhzeit, 

42,  96. 
Sorrento,  70. 
Spenser's  Gnat,  28, 


Theocritus,  115,  133. 
Thucydides,    as    a    model    of 

style,  86. 
Tibullus,  40,  121. 
Tityrus,  128. 
Tucca,  see  Plotius, 
Turnus,   173. 

Valerius  Cato,  14. 

Valerius    Messalla,    see    Mes- 

salla. 
Valgius,  117,  145,  148. 
Varius  Rufus,  14,  48,  52,  66, 

81,  140,  i43»  H5>  148. 

Varus,  see  Alfenus  Varus,  and 

Quintilius  Varus. 
Ventidius  Bassus,  81  ff. 
Venus  Genetrix,  71. 
Vergil,  see  Table  of  Contents. 
Vessereau,  on  the  Aetna,  58, 


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